


Running in the Shadows (Damn Your Love, Damn Your Lies)

by soft_october



Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Alternate History, Alternate Universe - Human, Alternate Universe - No Powers, Alternate Universe - Regency, Getting Back Together, Idiots in Love, M/M, Misunderstandings, Mutual Pining, Regency Romance, Slow Burn
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-10
Updated: 2019-07-22
Packaged: 2020-02-29 15:04:27
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 11
Words: 41,785
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18780685
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/soft_october/pseuds/soft_october
Summary: "In plain terms, Mr. A. Fell was a man of impeccable conduct and unusual habits, and in a similar manner to many of whom bore the first two traits, he must also take up the third: dire loneliness. Yet it had not always been thus. Indeed, there once was a time when it seemed as if he should never know solitude or want of suitable company for the rest of his days, but the circumstances by which Aziraphale might have unwound the knot that now bound up his heart had long since dragged themselves, mortally wounded, to die in the shades of regret. Their ghosts hung in his past, growing in consequence with the singular passing of each year until they eclipsed even the death of those who had the foremost hand in their making, and had the effect of separating the sequence of his days of into a gentle, blooming Before, whose painful beauty made the egregious scars of the After that much more appalling."What Aziraphale does not know is that, from across the ocean, Mr. Anthony J. Crowley is returning to England with his newly aquired wealth, wanting nothing more than to rebuild his life after a terrible shock and, perhaps, discover why he had been abandoned by his fiancé ten long years ago.





	1. Prologue

**Author's Note:**

> For this story I chose to use an alternate version of history, one in which LGBTQA+ people are accepted and their relationships completely normal. This has the added affect of changing a little bit how traditional gender roles and rules of society in Regency England work. For example, here it is acceptable for unmarried or unconnected couples to exchange letters, for women to pursue introductions, etc. I've done my best to keep the spirit of the story the same regardless.

It is a truth universally acknowledged that a single man in possession of a vast library must be in want of more books. 

This is certainly how Mr. Aziraphale Fell, whose weighty name resulted from his misfortune to be born to parents seized by more piety than good sense, had conducted himself for well on ten years. His went about acquiring his collection in fits and bursts, through minutely managed purchases and a careful eye for certain death notices in the Times, and as he had no siblings to care for, and, save for some distant branches of the family tree, he was free of that usual plague of leisurely gentleman: relatives in search of a luxurious living with nothing to recommend them but a shared ancestor. 

Thus, he remained at liberty to distribute his wealth as he saw fit, and he poured it into his books. His library, declared to be a magnificent sight to behold indeed by all those who ever stepped inside, bore the honor of being only room of the entire ancestral pile in which Aziraphale ever felt truly at ease, and where he was known, on more than one occasion, to linger until long past midnight, the whole of his being consumed with some voluminous text. The housekeeper, remembering the absent minded youth he had so recently been, despaired that one night he was sure to fall asleep in his chair with the candle burning and all the household would be torched to a crisp. This notion was exacerbated in the extreme after the whole concerns of society became dominated for a time over a similar, regrettable incident that had occurred at the once magnificent Thornfield not three years prior, and her opinion on his insistence to read well past the hours of sense or decency was expressed in its fullest measure each and every morning when breakfast arrived cold. 

The remainder of the prodigious household of Wardenclyffe Gardens held no similar complaint against him, though some of the younger servants might have preferred a more fashionable sort of gentleman, one that held balls and card parties attended by all manner of handsome and interesting friends of elegant dress and bearing, but the older set knew such talk to be nothing but nonsense: all the grandeur came along with nothing but more rooms to be made up and extra silver to be polished and supper arrangements changed every which way before noon. And, as any member of the staff in those great houses would freely admit, when the kitchen was in a fury over a flighty master and altered plans there was no peace to be found anywhere. The head footman in particular, known for dispensing a myriad of unsolicited  _ bon mots _ to those unfortunate servants not quick or clever in escaping him, would often pontificate “steady masters make light work,” and it was well understood by all who served under him that any word spoken against the unusual but kind Mr. Fell would be the last, if the offender had any sense in preserving his livelihood.

Of course, such a sanction could not be expected of his neighbors, well documented as it is how little neighbors can abide any behavior within their midst that at all deviates from what is expected, and all sorts of stories and gossip about the young man swirled around the whole of Hampshire, ebbing and flowing with the whims and worries of frustrated mothers who could not stand for a handsome man, whose parents, they would whisper with their hand over their hearts, did the decent thing: passing on when he reached his maturity, thus leaving an eligible young bachelor in their midst. Yet because the gentleman in question professed no interest at all in marrying their sons or daughters, he was a frequent target of barbs spoken over dinners to which his own invitation had been sadly misplaced. Such unbecoming feelings were the unfortunate state of most of these genteel matriarchs, with the exception of the esteemed Lady Nutter, that type of self-possessed widow of no small means, whose husband had gone to his reward so long ago hardly anyone could remember him, and who had built herself into such a pillar of the community that she was afforded the freedom to be as she wished. From Moonwatch, the palatial manor from which she reigned, it was established early and thoroughly that no such talk was tolerated, and here was where  Mr. Fell could most frequently be sighted outside his own estate, in spirited conversation with Lady Nutter's granddaughter, Miss Device, or the ubiquitous Mr. Pulsifer, who did not exactly live at Moonwatch, but persisted as a fixture there regardless. And should ever there be an enterprising mother or a spirited child who made clear it was their turn to make an attempt at the often oblivious Mr. Fell, Lady Nutter was happy to make introductions, if only to add to her own sense of gratification and amusement as the poor petitioner would quickly become lost among the conversation and go away unhappy and unwooed. 

Let not the picture be painted that Aziraphale was proud, or scornful of his less deserving neighbors. To the contrary, he dutifully accepted the recommended number of invitations which happened to arrive at his door, for though it was admitted that he was a bit odd as far as wealthy gentlemen went, none went out of their way to earn an impolite reputation in his eye. In the same pantomime of propriety, Aziraphale would attend and make the necessary compliments of the room, the artistic charm of the grounds and garden, the beauty and excellence of the host, and the dreadfulness of the weather before discreetly excusing himself to seek out the woefully inadequate library of the house where he would bide his time in words and quiet until the musicians ceased their playing and he was able to finally bid goodnight to his hosts amid a riot of departing carriages, to return to his solitary, peaceful existence at Wardenclyffe

In plain terms, Mr. A. Fell was a man of impeccable conduct and unusual habits, and in a similar manner to many of whom bore the first two traits, he must also take up the third: dire loneliness. Yet it had not always been thus. Indeed, there once was a time when it seemed as if he should never know solitude or want of suitable company for the rest of his days, but the circumstances by which Aziraphale might have unwound the knot that now bound up his heart had long since dragged themselves, mortally wounded, to die in the shades of regret. Their ghosts hung in his past, growing in consequence with the singular passing of each year until they eclipsed even the death of those who had the foremost hand in their making, and had the effect of separating the sequence of his days of into a gentle, blooming Before, whose painful beauty made the egregious scars of the After that much more appalling. 

Ah yes, he might begin, on an afternoon stroll though his extensive grounds, remembering a time when his hand clasped another’s, but that was Before. This is the After. Upon an evening he would order wine to be brought to him in his library, and in the Before there had been a different library, and two glasses, but in the After it was Wardenclyffe and only one. But it was In his dreams that the Before would torment him in earnest, as memories and sensations compounded on each other until upon waking there was only the cold, empty bed that dwelled in the After, and he could have wept for the longing ache that settled in his chest and refused to depart. Sometimes he did. So on it went, a cataloguing of his life as careful as any librarian or naturalist, into all things Before and After. The days of the Before had been so brief, he would lament in his most private moments, and now the gaping maw of the After loomed, consuming each minute, on and on, until the day he would at last lie within the family vault beside his mother and father and the three babes before him, all of whom suffered the terrible fate of so many in those days: their very first winter proved too trying. This path, this destined despair, which, while it would have not quite  _ delighted _ his Puritan ancestors would have at least confirmed their obstinacy in a way that smacked strongly of vanity, was the worry of his darkest hours, and these occasions had the dreadful habit of visiting him in the very dim hours of the morning as sure as his tea would come up cold. 

Poor Mr. Fell. For he, a man of rote and routine, did not know the rapidity with which he hurtled towards a time when he would be obliged to take up a separate method of accounting completely, and had he the privilege of foresight at its approach, it’s a wonder if he wouldn’t ride out to face it or hide away from its consequences, comfortable in his quiet desperation, with no sense of how the events of this narrative would conclude, and no other experience but that which ended in a pair of broken hearts. And yet we must now leave Mr. Fell in his library, unaware of what is about to befall him, certain that he will be at quite a loss to grapple with it. You may think it strange, might even speak to a failure of good breeding, to make so brief an introduction, but it is the firm belief of this author that one cannot begin to understand the proper subject of this volume without some mention of the affairs of the former. For this tale is not about the bookish, kind, and solitary Aziraphale, as he cautiously, even existentially, eyes the ending of his days and ways and tries to bear it up with dignity. No, we invest our concerns with fate of one who begins our story almost entirely, but not quite, seperated from Mr. Fell and Wardenclyffe. This narrative concerns the very object of Aziraphale’s method of bookkeeping, he of the infamous Before and After, the second, in our pair of broken hearts. 

It is about Mr. Anthony J. Crowley, a man of ancient bloodlines and recent means, and it begins as he completes the last leg of a journey months in the making, back towards the home of his youth. We will meet him as he takes his first steps in a decade long separation from the English shores. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Let me know what you think about the style! 
> 
> Should be updated at least once a week.


	2. Chapter 2

If, later in his life, Mr. Anthony J. Crowley were asked to recount the circumstances of his decision to return from abroad, he would claim it had been mere caprice which enticed him to depart from all his foreign investments and make his way back to the land of his birth. Although this was a dreadful falsehood, the truth would have been so incomprehensible to the common ear that he believed it to be a mercy to speak the lie instead. Perhaps the reasons for the journey were less understood by their originator than even he himself claimed, and such thoughts and others of their ilk plagued Crowley as he stepped off the ship, a great deal wealthier than he’d been ten years prior at his departure, but of no less despondent a disposition. And as these ideas, so like those that had come before in that they would not be quieted, gnawed at the edges of his nostalgia, he found himself handed from one set of livrey to the next along his way from the docks to his lodgings for the evening. London was no different than he remembered, a little more crowded, of course, but still the same thin veneer of gold leaf scraped over a thousand individual pains and miseries. He would be glad to leave it, though tomorrow, he knew, would be an exhaustive parade of activity and yet more travel, for the house he had charged his solicitor with the purchase of lay half a day by coach, and he took comfort in the knowledge the trip would be made in a chaise and four he owned outright. The boy he had been, who never in his life traveled without the usual boorish set of strange companions one is typically forced to endure on a shared drive, would have marvelled at the solitude.  

The rooms he found himself in were acceptable, better than he ever found in America at least, and the cold ham he was served for supper a sharp reminder he no longer dined in Paris. Before he took to bed for the night, in his common fashion, Crowley checked and double checked the contents of the black trunk that had been his constant companion since he first departed, for as numerous as his luggage grew he could never bear to part with the first, and now it contained the whole of the new enterprise he would whisper out of the earth. There, packed in sand and moss, were the seeds and cuttings of ten years travel which would, with any luck, keep him and his remaining interests well apportioned for the rest of his days.

But the trunk held other secrets than those which could be discerned at first glance, and on a whim he ran his hands along a section of the lid that bulged a bit, felt the bundle of letters that, years ago, he had wrapped carefully in oilcloth and hidden away from all prying eyes, including his own, as parting with them would have been out of the question, but to look upon them with any sort of regularity a torment. 

He pulled his hand away, as swiftly as if the trunk burst into flames. There remained other matters to attend to, and he need not indulge in maudlin fancies. According to a recent missive from his agent, a local gentleman by the name of Mr. Young, the glasshouses he ordered built at the new property upon his purchase of it a year ago had been completed not a fortnight prior, and would be ready the moment he arrived with the subject of their employ; Young had proven himself to be both reliable in his work and discreet in his operations, choosing a neighborhood for his client that Crowley knew to be as temperate in its seasons as in the nature of its inhabitants and, since no word arrived from some unscrupulous relations Crowley would rather forget, Young had done so tactfully. Hampshire was certainly well situated for his purposes, being as far away from those relatives in Manchester as reasonable, and if a certain estate lay a bit nearer than one might wish - and that closeness was a bottomless font of alternating excitement and apprehension - well, perhaps that was an advantage to the purchase as well. 

Or it wasn't at all, and all of this was a terrible idea that would cause Crowley to depart for another journey, this one for two decades, or he might never return this time. 

When these fears were upon him, Crowley attempted to quiet them in the usual ways: trying to make himself believe that his own feelings had completely altered, and preemptively predicting bitter disappointment. “He was young and wealthy,” he might say. “Surely he must be wed by now.” Or, “I am sure he could not abide Hampshire, and long since retired to Venice, or Vienna.” And the ever despairing, “He shall not even remember you. You were together little more than a fraction of the time you have been apart.” As with anyone familiar with such statements, they were perfectly unsuccessful at either allaying his fears or setting reasonable expectations, and Crowley simultaneously dreaded and was desperate for the inevitable moment when they must one day come again into contact with each other. His sense of the theatrical demanded it be across a crowded ballroom of some country squire or another, their eyes meeting, an instant of surprise and recognition, and then - well, then they would see. There lingered other imaginings after, but Crowley would not admit them to anyone, not even to himself. 

“I won’t be the one to seek him out, you can be sure of that,” muttered Crowley, closing and locking up the trunk. “If he chooses to call upon me that’s his business.”  

It was not a restful night. All manner of specters of the past made themselves known, howling though his dreams, demanding they be acknowledged, one name crying louder than all the rest. When the morning dawned with its dismal rain and its weighty list of errands he refused to greet it and slept on, leaving his new footman to stand the door for nigh on an hour and a half, while the maids passed him by and offered him gente, torchorous, and teasing smiles. By the time Crowley at last bribed himself into rising from bed with the promise of a strong cup of tea and emerged into the hall the poor lad had been shaken into quite the state, and begged his master they might depart from this place with all due haste.

Crowley took his time concluding business in town: there were letters to be sent and received, plans to be laid, and the clock had long since struck noon when he at last set out for Hampshire and Pinebrace Park. He made a few honest efforts to concentrate on another reading of his scrupulously kept notebooks, but he found that his eye would be found again wandering towards the once-familiar roads, and at length he was obliged to abandon the practical enterprise entirely and allow himself to indulge on memories and fancy as the coach carried him onwards. 

Upon arriving at Pinebrace he was exceedingly pleased with the situation of the house, the gardens, and the glasshouses, and freely communicated this to Mr. Young, who could do no less than be there in person the moment his employer would take possession of the house. Mr. Young accepted this compliment with a sharp inclination of his head indicating perhaps ‘exceedingly pleased’ was the bare minimum to have been expected, and that, as a proper sort of man, Mr. Young would be capable of nothing short of perfection in the discharge of his duties. 

The house was no grand estate, but it would serve its purpose as the residence of a gentleman of leisure, as he now intended to be, with rooms enough for entertaining and merry-making, should he ever be so inclined to do so. He made a through examination of each of the rooms in turn, noting what would have to be altered or wholly removed, and the work kept his mind off of other people and things making their bids to dominate his thoughts. Finally, removing himself to the stables, he made a review of the five horses he had sent ahead of him from the Continent, paying special attention to his favourite, a black Arabian stallion he named Bentley upon purchase. This was done to the extreme distress of the seller, who named him Düstersturm upon his birth, but as the man had obviously been trying to cheat Crowley on the price, Crowley loudly proclaimed the new name without any guilt whatsoever. Bentley was eager to ride, and as the sun had yet to slip beneath the rolling hills, Crowley saw no harm in obliging him: the two set out on a tour of the entire perimeter of the park, and when he nudged his horse to a gallop and felt the wind rushing past his ears, he almost felt content. 

But at night, when Crowley laid down upon his new bed, as he examined the use of the word ‘home,’ for this place was to be his home now, he could no longer grasp that settled, certain feeling. Despite the house’s closeness, its lack of grandeur and its honesty, it did not feel quite right to him, like an ill-made pair of shoes, and he hoped the months to come would bring more ease to his troubled mind.

* * *

For the first few weeks at Pinebrace, Crowley found delight in his the solitude. Happily he tended to the affairs of his much reduced business interests, to the arrangement of the rooms of the house just so, and to the retraining of the entire staff of gardeners and groundskeepers, the undertaking of which was decided the moment Crowley had first taken a turn about the grounds on foot. He did things at first without regard to the proper order, using an improper form of address with the butler, speaking with the maid instead of the housekeeper, but as inconsistencies were gently pointed out to him by well meaning staff, he tried to behave as he believed a wealthy and unconnected gentleman ought, and this was cause for all manner of headaches as he strove to maintain a collected exterior while, inwardly, a ledger of missteps and self criticisms began to accumulate an alarming rate. To combat this, he endeavored to spend the majority of his time at his work in the glasshouses, for within their sanctity he felt most like himself. Here he had no one to please, no act to maintain, and the sureness with which he conducted his work was a balm to the complete ineptitude he displayed in all other courses of his existence. It was as yet too early to tell if his methods of packing had been a success, but had high hopes that came out as grumbled threats toward the seeds that had yet to prosper. 

Crowley originally situated his workshop in the central glasshouse, but he soon discovered an irreparable flaw in this initial plan. For the way the building was situated, the location of the workshop within central house required he face towards the southwest, and towards the southwest he knew lay Wardenclyffe, and he who lived there. Within no time at all Crowley found himself unable to concentrate on his notebooks, on mixing the proper consistency of soil, on delicately removing cuttings and seeds from their packing, so often would his eyes drift from the table and through the glass, imagining he could glimpse the tops of the tall Wardenclyffe chimneys on a clear day, wondering what the goings on of the place might be. He had been caught off guard completely on how the proximity of that man would affect him, a constant needling presence in the back of his mind, much like a missing limb, and many were the times he made to depart from his work and ride over before thoughts of a calmer nature arrested his progress. 

After several days, he ordered the workshop moved to the left glasshouse, where his view was nothing more than the east wing of his own humble Pinebrace. 

He did not long for company, as his last sojourn into society, if the planters class of America could merit such an honorific, had been an unmitigated disaster. His decision to rip up all his roots there and seek his fortunes elsewhere was due in no small part to that particular spectacle. But men such as he could not long remain alone and content, and one morning, four weeks after his arrival and just as soon as he was through with his tea, it became suddenly and perfectly clear that, not only would he die of boredom if something interesting did not happen that very instant, but that he was liable to take some drastic action to relieve the dullness himself. This was more of a threat to his own person than anything else, for his attempts to relieve his boredom usually resulted in a great deal of wine being consumed or an injury incurred in a remarkably foolish manner, and this was no longer America, where that sort of thing was tolerated, nay, even celebrated, and his actions would suffer censure. Lucky he then, that the butler brought in, along with the morning post, an invitation from one Lady Nutter of Moonwatch, who had requested the honor of his presence at an intimate gathering that very afternoon. Heedless of how such invitations should be accepted or no, he at once departed the breakfast table to change into his riding clothes, ordered that his horse be brought up from the stables at noon and, almost too belatedly, requested someone provide him with directions to the esteemable lady's estate. 

As it was a fine afternoon, he a fair rider for one who had not learned as a boy, and his horse so eager to gallop that he arrived at Moonwatch much earlier than he intended, and, noted he should, in the future, determine the fashionable timing of such things. Moonwatch was a grand old house of fine brickwork, as Crowley established with a practiced eye that the whole of Pinebrace could fit comfortably inside its western half, and it would not due to make a poor first impression on those with custody of such rank and prestige. 

Yet the footmen who attended him gave no indication his behavior or timing was at all out of the ordinary, and showed him through to where the party was gathered in the drawing room: their high spirits could be evidenced from the laughter that reached him well into the foyer. 

“Mr. Crowley!” Mrs. Nutter exclaimed upon his entrance to the room, graciously accepting his deep bow and stoically ignoring the shattering of a glass from further within, “I cannot express how delighted I am at your timely arrival, as you simply must make a decision for us this instant, for if it’s left to us they’ll be no agreement on the matter. Which of these fine young gentlemen most closely resembles Monteverdi’s depiction of Orpheus in  _ L’Ofreo _ ? My granddaughter claims that Mr. Pulsifer has more of his high melancholy, but I for one believe that it’s Mr. Fell with the proper countenance. Which do you prefer? Oh, Mr. Fell nevermind that glass on the floor, I’ll ring for Susan.”


	3. Chapter 3

Lady Nutter’s remaining words became enveloped by an odd type of buzzing Crowley knew had no corporeal origin, and which was sure to be swiftly accompanied by a blinding headache behind his eyes, beginning the moment he cast his eyes upon the pale, blond gentleman Lady Nutter had addressed as Mr. Fell. Even before he heard the name, he was struck, as if by a physical blow, by the familiar visage and the sudden and seemingly endless outpouring of memories and sensations which accompanied it, and it was only through sheer force of will that he kept his wits about him and did not stumble backward into the hall. 

Ten years, which had undeniably often felt like quite a long time, saw themselves compacted into a sheaf of paper as thin as a dying leaf, and their oft-purported effect upon his feelings crumbled just as easily. Here was the pale cheek he once so admired, the eyes like the blue summer sky which he swore he would never tire of gazing upon, the lips that - Crowley had the sense to realize he was plainly staring at Aziraphale - not Mr. Fell, for never could he think of him in the formal - and might have been concerned about such an obvious display until it became clear  _ everyone  _ was staring at Aziraphale as he, with the blush of embarrassment, strove to pick up the pieces of the glass that had been shattered upon Crowley's entry, and now no doubt persisted as to who had been so startled upon his rather informal introduction. 

Why should he not be distraught and distracted, Crowley would wonder sullenly upon reflection later, and why should he not be in the same state, for many times in the preceding decade Crowley had imagined this moment, this meeting, and in none of his imaginings had they been in a small gathering at a stranger's home, their personal drama made plain to a trio of baffled onlookers, though there had been a sofa and a shattered wine glass in more than a few of them. Also, there had either been a great deal more shouting or embraces, depending on the whims of the day and the circumstances of the fancy, while the laughter quiet, and simple. This, this public display of suppressed emotion and barely managed embarrassment was a terrible beginning indeed, and Crowley was as certain as he had been of anything that this farce would only escalate in scale and scope if he could not find a way to arrest its rapid progress. Yet how could he be expected to form a single thought which would deviate from the chorus in his head, shouting with their endless refrain of ‘He is here, at last, he is here.’ 

“Forgive me,” said Aziraphale, and a wild, frenzied thread of hope coiled round Crowley's heart, but the statement was directed at Lady Nutter, and it woefully wound itself up again. “I was simply struck by a momentary affliction, I can assure you it shall not happen again.” He gave no acknowledgement of Crowley at all, to the further mortification of his most hidden dreams, and though a name lingered upon his lips, a designation that was neither Mr. Fell nor Aziraphale, but a word that had been whispered in between kisses, weaved in between sheets, that name at once turned to bitter ash in Crowley's mouth as Aziraphale continued to, with a stubborn determination to rival that of a glacier, divert his eyes away from catching Crowley's. 

“Oh think nothing of it Mr. Fell,” replied Lady Nutter, after a brief moment of silence, “but indeed, might we not take our little party out into the gardens that the air might refresh you? You young people do so love your walks. Ah - but yet again I have forgotten to do the proper thing, and made the introductions.” All of this was spoken as Lady Nutter alternatively moved towards the door, the sofa and back over again, speaking to each in turn and freely emoting, a scandalous display in any polite English drawing room, more in line with what Crowley once saw in the parties in Venice and Paris, and in despite of his abject distress he was resolved to like her instantly.  But there still left the matter of presently being introduced to he who could never be further from a stranger, and yet who seemed to behave that they were, who had been the cause of so much strife, and afterwards to spend an afternoon in intimate conversation with him! Crowley debated on how he might extricate himself from the situation as Lady Nutter moved from her granddaughter (Ms. Anathema Device, I’ve tried to teach her everything I know and you won’t find a smarter, more unmarriable through the whole of society) Mr. Pulsifer (Knew his grandfather in my day, the boy is the copy of him in face but the very opposite in temperment, bless his soul) and of course Mr. Fell (One of the finest - oh! You know each other then, Mr. Crowley? Well that’s quite fortuitous!) Crowley would not allow the lie to continue, the decision made as she attempted the introduction, and he confirmed their connection outright, daring Aziraphale to deny it, allowing him opportunity to confirm it, to repair the damage already done so quickly, before they had even spoken a word to each other, and that old enemy, his treacherous hope, again rose like the tide as he waited upon an answer. 

“Yes… er… Quite,” Aziraphale repeated, paling by the moment, fully lacking the power of speech, it would seem, and quite out of the blue a stab of rage hammer into the region of his heart, positive this was a slight as sure as there had been the day their mutual happiness forever concluded. How could Aziraphale find no welcome on his lips, not a single word of kindness?  _ Here was he to whom Aziraphale had once been engaged! _

Or perhaps this was solely the confirmation that Crowley, even now, with his newfound riches, did not merit the recognition of a proper greeting, or was it  _ because _ they were newfound that they were held in lower esteem than those contained within the coffers of the magnificent and ancient Fells? Would Aziraphale have allowed them to be introduced to each other in this very drawing room without correcting their host, allowing half-truths and shadows of falsehoods to compound upon them rather than claim him, even as an acquaintance? Anger shored up within him, as sure and sharp as he had experienced a decade ago, as he waited at a lonely inn at Calais for someone who would never meet him, watching the empty ships roll in and out, feeling more like a fool with the passing of each day and growing furious with the world, with the Fells, with Aziraphale, and with himself most of all; this anger traced a familiar path through all of his hurts and hardened his heart against their cause.  

Crowley supplied to the gathered party that he and Mr. Fell knew the privilege of being together at Oxford, and he communicated this with cool detachment, giving the impression that the entirety of their acquaintance nothing more than cohorts among some dreary lecture hall, another face huddled over a quill in the library, frantic with scratching and sketching. Ms. Device and Mr. Pulsifer seemed satisfied by this over pruning of their shared histories, though Lady Nutter allowed it to pass only after a thoughtful glance between the two of them, immediately followed by a loud proclamation that they should follow their original course and take a turn about the gardens, perhaps without her, as none of the young people would be able to be at all easy with such an old and loquacious chaperone, and the delightful Mr. Crowley and Mr. Fell would be at liberty to resume their acquaintance. 

Mr. Fell supplied the answer to Crowley’s question of how to remove himself from such a dire fate when he protested that truly, Lady Nutter spoke too unkindly of herself, and while certainly five was no party for walking, he would be happy to even the numbers by retiring to Wardenclyffe, to rest after his brief illness from earlier. There remained the usual bout of offering to call for a doctor, and then the objections to so much trouble, and the end result that Crowley, in remarkably quick burst of slyness, considering the circumstances, avowed to escort Mr. Fell to the drive to wait for his carriage, and to this Lady Nutter heartily agreed. Despite his offer, Crowley did not offer Aziraphale his arm, but rather walked a safe distance beside him, careful that not even their sleeves should brush against each other. 

“Mr. Crowley,” said Aziraphale, when they passed through the drawing room and their voices well outside the range of the most practiced of eavesdroppers. Crowley thought he might speak again - hoped that he would speak again - but when nothing further was uttered, conceded a forced and cool “Mr. Fell.” 

No further conversation accompanied them to the front of the house, to both their increasing distress. Aziraphale looked as though he truly would be ill at any moment, and the fury within Crowley delighted in it as much as the old feelings despaired, and when the coach stopped before them Crowley, without thinking, opened the door and gave Aziraphale a steadying hand, which he in turn blithely accepted as he stepped up into the interior, ignoring utterly the footman who had jumped down from the box to perform the same gesture.

To feel the warmth of that hand in his once more! It was all Crowley could do to maintain his composure, made all the easier by the awful reality: Aziraphale gave no indication that he felt anything at all at the brief contact, and vanished into the depths of the coach without so much as a polite farewell. 

Crowley watched the carriage retreat down the drive, and was of half a mind to call for Bentley and ride away from this place with all due haste. And yet, no party could endure two such abrupt departures, and though Crowley was in something approaching a panic, he was obliged to brave the remainder of the gathering, despite the fact that he wished for nothing more than to be swallowed up by the earth or, barring that impossibility, unwinding the fabric of time to erase the decision to ever come to Moonwatch. Perhaps he could fashion it so he might be lost at sea, and never have come back at all. But he would be damned before word got back to that gentleman that he had left Moonwatch not five minutes hence. Instead, the report would be that, heedless of Aziraphale's departure, Crowley had conducted himself with propriety, dignity, and grace and not at all like a fool who had been struck by the violence of feelings he had hoped in vain would grow more docile with the effects of distance and time. 

The loveliness of the gardens surrounding the estate aided in this affectation, even in the quieting stupor of late September, having the effect of soothing him, though the place where Aziraphale's hand had touched his would insist on continually making itself known. He paid the grounds the required compliments, received with the proper gratitude by his hostess. 

“I hope you don’t find me too forward, Mr. Crowley,” began Mrs. Nutter, whom he knew  would find her way beside him while her granddaughter and Mr. Pulsifer walked in front of them, the young woman’s sleeves twitching as she described how Gauss’s work in astronomy and number theory might lead to the ability to predict the future to her companion, who nodded in a sort of awed and grave approval. “I have been too long a widow, and free to think as I might to be a respectable woman should I have had the misfortune to be born poor, and yet by any number of absurd ways such a thing could be determined I am held up as a paragon of womanly virtue merely by the chances of my birth and the misfortune to have a husband whose wealth was only surpassed by the foolishness to marry a woman such as I and die so young.” 

“I do not mind it a whit, Lady Nutter,” Crowley responded, growing easier in his role as a distinguished gentleman who hadn't just smiled though his own evisceration. “Though I can hardly speak to being the judge of English decorum, as any number of things might be changed in the past decade, and I would be none the wiser of them. In America, for instance, they would deem you to be positively dull.” 

“I have played my hand too early I see, and should have allowed you to believe that it is the fashion of all the mothers of the county to be so liberal with their thoughts.” 

“I would have made quite the botched introduction into society, to be sure Madam, although I believe you would have delighted in that more than you’d be apt to say.” 

“At last,” Lady Nutter declared, “A man more wit than weary!” She laughed at her own jest, and Crowley could not help but chuckle along with her, as Lady Nutter was the brand of woman who determined the mood a gathering should express, and would drag the rest along with her whether they were like to or no. Lady Nutter went on to reveal that Mr. Crowley should not be so unfettered with the expression of his finer qualities, lest some of the more discerning mothers hear of it, and once the gossip wound its way through card parties and impromptu balls Crowley would have no shortage of parents clamoring for his introduction, their pleas of their unwed children fresh in their poor ears, and following the parents there would be a deluge of invitations, and then he would be obligated to be swept along with them, else he should be labeled a brute, and they would try all the more to tame his wild heart, and half his riches in the process. 

“Such a sequence would be a lamentable state of affairs for all parties concerend, for I do not intend to spend any of my time in Hampshire as the fox in a husband hunting party.” This was spoken lightly, though all the feelings behind it were gnashing their teeth and wailing in mourning, but Lady Nutter found this remark to be extraordinarily smart and called her granddaughter’s attention to it. 

“I can well understand Mr. Crowley’s sentiment,” Ms. Device replied, pausing in her diatribe to Mr. Pulsifer, “For it was quite the same for me during this season last. First there was my coming out in society and all were fawning over my bloodlines, if not my name, then it was as if I were a carcass to be fallen upon by vultures who saw nothing in my bearing but the wealth I might bring to a match. The men were dreadfully dull, and the women too afraid to ask about anything but the jewels at my throat lest they be taken for a thinking creature and suffer rebukes from those who believe women should be as delicate and silent as glass sculptures, and were quite put out when I explained there is entirely too much stock put into shiny, pleasantly tinted accidents of geology, besides their ethereal properties, of course.” Miss Device, apparently considering the subject concluded, resumed her mathematics lecture to a properly stupefied Mr. Pulsifer. 

“You’ll do alright, Mr. Crowley, I’ve no doubt in your ability to guard yourself against even the most persistent of mothers with the dullest, least marriageable children. Though I suppose you and Mr. Fell are alike in that regard.” Crowley made a obliging tone he prayed evidenced both his approval and his passive disinterest in anything regarding that particular gentleman, but Lady Nutter seemed not to discern the subtleties in his manner, or if she did she paid absolutely no mind to them at all, and launched into a lengthy sermon on the many virtues of Mr. Fell, not the least of which his uncanny ability to thwart potential suitors.

“I suppose he was the same shy young man while the two of you were at school?” ventured Lady Nutter, but Crowley only responded that their brevity of their acquaintance had not permitted a through study of each other’s character, and, to himself, despaired that in an awful sense it was not an untruth.

“There will be time enough to get to know each other again before everyone removes to town,” she continued. “Though you’ll find he isn’t one to be out and about either here or during the season. He ventures to London because it's what expected of him, what his parents would have wanted of him, but I daresay he rarely takes any pleasure in the task.” But Crowley's ambivalence, or rather unwillingness on the subject was made plain and she didn’t sally forth again, displaying a measure of restraint not often found in women of her age and rank. 

Despite it's beginning the remainder of his visit at Moonwatch bore itself as tolerably as could be expected, and he was able to bid goodbye to the party after a reasonable length of time and three cups of tepid tea with none the wiser to the tumult of his emotions. 

It was only later, as he spurred Bentley on towards Pinebrace, out of sight and hearing of any other that might raise objection, that he allowed himself to scream. 


	4. Chapter 4

Crowley became a regular guest at Moonwatch in the months thereafter, and was a favourite of Miss Device’s for both his scintillating conversation and his absolute disinterest in pursuing her hand: Mr. Pulsifer, on the occasion he stumbled from the continual fog in which he found himself whenever he moved within that particular lady’s sphere, was pleasant enough when he spoke, and Lady Nutter, true to her word, was as free with her thoughts as ever. A diverse selection of ladies and gentlemen, from both the neighborhood at hand and visiting from a distance, always seemed to be in attendance at dinners or card parties or afternoon teas, and Crowley did indeed found himself a subject of interest among them for a while, before people and events of a more recent nature took their turns in gossip at table or around the drawing room. As had been anticipated, he soon made introductions and won invitations to a score of dinners and balls, tolerable enough for local affairs designed to relieve an evening’s boredom, as well as shooting parties with Mr. Young and a similar minded group of men and women, but these he never attended, and would go so far as to feign illness to escape them. 

Mr. Fell, however, escaped the parties and the hunts altogether, and was not seen again at Lady Nutter’s or anywhere else that autumn, though Crowley nearly offended more than once with his penchant to turn his head at each new face that entered a room. Eventually it came out that Mr. Fell chose to return to town even before Christmas, and therefore Crowley found himself in no danger of recreating the disastrous tableau of their first meeting in over ten years. 

Crowley at first revelled in this discovery, considering it a victory, but over what, exactly, he had triumphed he would have been pressed to specify. Yet as October tucked in and gently folded into November, he found that the distance put between them brought him no cheer at all, and in the natural course of discovery he despaired to realize what he originally interpreted as ease was quite the opposite.  He supposed it must have been that very same heightened interaction which reignited his own anger that drove Aziraphale into the heart of London before even the earliest shades of the season whispered their way through its crowded streets.

As was his wont, like one of Shakespeare's tragic heroes, Crowley would analyze again and again those brief moments during which they once more gazed upon each other, the tremble of Aziraphale’s lip, the white around his blue eyes, the shaking of his hands, and he devised as many explanations for the behavior as he had hours of solitude. Over the morning paper, perhaps, he would attribute the shattered glass to a rush of joy, yet in an hour he would be certain it had been dashed down in anger, but by the time he crept into his bed to watch the moonlight splay across his sheets he would tell himself it had been an accident on no account of Crowley's reappearance at all, that Aziraphale perhaps had not even recognized him, not spared a moment of his time reflecting on the man who spent more than a reasonable amount of ten years and miles and miles of empty ocean often wondering about that final day, what they had said to each other, the cold bed at the inn in Calais built for two, yet where Crowley slept alone until in a fit of disgust he left, not the brooding hero at all, but one of Shakespeare’s fools. 

In these, his darkest moments, he would dress himself - for indeed he would keep no valet at all despite the butler’s grumbles and Mr. Young's pontifications on the trappings of a proper gentleman - and make his way across the grounds to his glasshouses, where the seeds of his future were just beginning to work their wondrous magic, the pale green shoots emerging from their long slumber in exactingly managed English soil. In this endeavor his dismal childhood served him well, and the seeds and cuttings taken along his travels survived their traumatic journey from the east, to the west, and back again: were fairly thriving in his glasshouses under his watchful, demanding eye. Into these, his laboratories of creation, he would remove himself, as there was no better balm to the disquiet of his thoughts than the work, and yet even here, in his holiest of holies, he was plagued by flights of wishing and fancy.

There were nights when no moon shone, and he stole from the house to the grounds with a dim lantern in the manner of a thief, and it was common on those nights that he spend no more than an hour there, and for the return trip to be completed with the same furtiveness with which it began.

But then there were those times when Artemis was in the fullest bloom of her splendor, and the glasshouses and all the treasures they contained were cast in her ghostly sliver, ethereal light. His chest would ache first with the painful beauty of the display and shortly thereafter with the knowledge that there was none to share in it with him. Shoving the mournful wail of the thought away he would determine spend the night there in his workshops, tending to each of his precious plants as if they were a brood of truculent, wild children that needed a stern retelling of the whole index of their transgressions, with no relief for anyone until the morning, when he would traipse back across the lawn, crushing the dew and frost beneath his feet, and when he finally reached his bedroom to collapse onto the sheets and sleep quite soundly until a absolutely wretched hour of the afternoon or evening.

It was upon one of these midnight outings whereby he found cause of alarm: someone had broken into central glasshouse, evidenced by the bottom door panel which had been chiseled away and then refastened in a clumsy manner, causing it to spring from its place when he entered the workshop. With growing consternation, and armed with a spade should the search prove fruitful, Crowley crept silently through the rooms, a multitude of fears hounding each step. He hoped it was only some poor soul or another seeking shelter against the unseasonably bitter November cold, and reasoned it could not be otherwise, for though the houses had been built through the help of Mr. Young, Crowley had revealed to no one but his sellers his intentions as to their use, and they would have no cause for espionage or thievery. Fortunately, the tension was alleviated in an end that was as anticlimactic as relieving, as whoever the culprit had been had long since fled; whatever their purpose had been, not one of Crowley’s treasures were disturbed from their place. Yet the incident unnerved him, and he did not linger long in the glasshouses that night, jumping as he did upon the flutter of each shadow. He was determined, as he pulled the bedclothes up to his chin and reminisced about hiding from monsters when he’d been a child, he would, upon the conclusion of tomorrow’s work, lay in wait, should the intruder reappear, and thus resolved, he fell asleep. 

Although Crowley did not have long to wait behind the toolshed, his visions of some vagabond or act of professional subterfuge were absurdly misplaced, for the miscreant who pried the panel off the door that he, his dog, and his three friends might scramble inside could not have been more than eleven years old, and a gentleman’s son besides, judging by the clothes which were sure to be the cause of some poor laundress’s sorrow when they were sent to be cleaned. Crowley waited fifteen minutes while the children huddled together in deep confidence, a image both familiar and sad, remembering a similar gang in which he had once roamed and the games they devised, before rapidly stealing across the lawn: as the element of surprise was lost to him, the houses being made of glass with any movement upon the grass between them and the house could be clearly observed. There was a minor fracas during which the children attempted escape through the door at the other end of the workshop, but this one was not so easily pried apart, and it culminated in three accomplices, who were, he noted, not of their leader’s stock, waited behind him with downcast eyes. 

The provocateur of the break-in, however, would not be cowed, and met Crowley with an eye both proud and defiant, the way Crowley imagined a child-king given to an early understanding of his office might. In a similar manner the boy declared he was Adam Young, the child of Mr. Young, and his father had built the glasshouses, and thus he felt entitled to them as an informal club where he and his friends might discuss weighty matters, here Crowley supposed these were no more significant than play and stolen sweets.

“Your father did not  _ build _ the houses, young man, he merely contracted those who did,” Crowley replied. 

“My father did,” whispered one of the boys behind Adam, so softly Crowley could barely hear him, and with that the whole situation was thrown into clear focus. Here was the son of a gentleman, the son of Mr. Young in particular, who never did a thing in his life unseemly or undeserving of his rank, in company with children not of his station and whom his father would most certainly disapprove of. It was a story all too familiar and painful to Crowley, and it was for this reason he didn’t at once turn the lot of them out and send Adam back to his parents.

“Who are the rest then?” he asked Adam instead, and Adam said they were Pepper, Wensleydale and Brian, his ‘boon companions,’ like in the stories, for a hero must always have his boon companions with him. 

“And we aren’t doing any harm here, Sir,” he ventured. “We haven't disturbed any of your property.” Crowley, who would need to have the door repaired, was not of the same mind, but allowed the boy to continue. “It’s just that here no one bothers us or calls for my father.” Crowley had no response to this, and Adam, an intelligent lad indeed, sensing his weakness, came down with his coup de grace. “And if you please,” one of Crowley's precious notebooks, which he had not even known to be mislaid, was handed back to him, “We were going through your book and we determined you're using the wrong soil for the  _ Azalea Indicas _ .” Though truth be told he pronounced it Az-a-lee In-die-kaz. “That’s why their growth is stunted.” 

“And what would you know about the Azaleas?” Crowley demanded wryly, a mimicry of Adam’s unusual pronunciation. Here all four children began to clamour at once, and the story, spilling out in the fits and bursts and infinite digressions of a childhood explanation, they were playing as naturalists in the forests of India and cataloguing the wonders they witnessed - here Crowley assumed they meant the plants that grew throughout the glasshouses - and such a thing must be done properly, according to Adam. Information must be gathered, hence their rifling through the notebooks which had been, though written with the utmost diligence, rather haphazardly left about the glasshouses. They further revealed Wensleydale’s father was the head gardener at some nearby estate, Brian’s father, a farmer, would always go on about why you couldn't keep planting the same space with the same turnips year after year, and Pepper’s mother taught her some peasant superstition that churned out the largest produce and kept a family in full fettle, and with Adam embarking on a course of science with his tutor, and the whole of it was that Crowley noted in his books that Azaleas grow best in soil already in use for a few seasons, yet what filled the pots in which the cuttings were planted had not ever been touched by plow or hoe. 

Crowley held out his hand for the book, and after an extended period of scanning his notes and Adam’s scrawls, noted in clipped tones that perhaps the children noticed something of value indeed. 

“So you see sir, we can be useful, we won’t harm anything.” Adam spoke with that imperious manner which made Crowley want to agree regardless, though he was, admittedly, less torn on the subject of whether he should take the proper course of action than he perhaps should have been from the start. He had never been one to favor those types of society's rules anyway. They could stay, he began, provided they didn't touch or disturb any of the plants, but if they thought of another clever notion they were free to express themselves to him and to these rather loose stipulations the children eagerly agreed. Crowley considered the matter closed after he supplied Adam with the location of an extra key, to prevent any more mishaps with the door.  

He had not, however, counted on Adam Young, and had forgotten how a determined child, once his mind has at last found interest in a subject, will throw himself headlong into a course of study. Crowley himself had been such a child once, but how easily the adult mind forgets what the child always knew. One morning he found a new row of planting pots on the floor of the central greenhouse he knew he had not himself procured, and upon examination he noted that each was filled with a different ratio of loam and sand. The boy created a bit of an experiment all on his own, using Crowley’s supplies. Such presumption upon his hospitality was irritating, but as Adam’s little experiment was not exactly in the way of anything, he allowed it to remain. As the days went on and the little shoots began to burst from their soil, a notebook appeared, where the height of each sprout was carefully noted each day in scrawl which was a testament to how well he minded his tutors, and at this Crowley could not help but chuckle. 

But it was not until one Saturday in late November, when Crowley was attempting to graft a failing  _ Delonix regia _ unto a hardier English sapling, that he realized the boy’s interest was not one of those passing fancies of children who soon move on to the next adventure. 

“What’re you doing with that?” said a voice at his elbow, and it was all Crowley could do not to start and upset the whole thing. His initial reaction, anger, was buried as soon as it made itself known, for yelling at a child, no matter how impertinent he might be, was something Crowley vowed long ago he should never do. Instead he queried why the boy was not with his tutors, or, since it was apparent Adam had no regard for those bastions of authority at all, his friends. Adam replied with all the frankness of childhood that his tutors were nothing short of intolerable and he wisely removed himself from their care just after breakfast and alas, his friends remained occupied with chores aplenty, as winter soon upon them. 

Shrugging, for indeed he saw no reason against it, Crowley began to explain the process of grafting as he did the work, why one might wish to do it at all -  in this case he was anxious of the tree’s root structure, that they might not take to the cooler climes, and was attempting to rescue his samples - and all the advantages therein. 

“My tutor says that God put everything in its place, and to disturb it would be a sin, like telling God you knew better than him,” Adam mumbled, and for the first time in their brief acquaintance Crowley caught doubt in the boy’s tone, and told him that he had never heard a more ridiculous thing in his life. 

“How can there be room for growth, or change, if everything is already perfect?” he asked, and went on to explain that it was not merely the environment the plant came from or the circumstances of its origin that would determine the manner in which it flourished, if it did, for there were a myriad of factors and principles which would aid or cripple it in the years to come, and each must be encouraged or railed against in their turn. Not to mention changes bring with themselves new ways to be used or be appreciated, and if everything were stagnant how would these be realized? 

“Is a rose perfect when it buds, or blooms, or when the hips come in and can be harvested for medicine? Why should change or alteration in appearance or function necessarily be for ill? To grow beyond what is intended, that is perfection.” Crowley did not know if he were trying to convince Adam or himself, but the boy seemed brighter, and far from being a silent observer, Adam approached him with all manner of questions which ranged from the obvious to the shockingly astute. Before Crowley completed his task Adam was already dreaming up ways he might have pears and apples all growing on the same tree, and though Crowley thought informing him this was already a known practice might spoil his daydreams, only bolstered them. 

“Then I must graft something even more interesting,” he declared with all the force and fortitude of a future prime minister. 

Adam communicated all the knowledge he absorbed from Crowley to his friends unlike his instructors in that they both listened attentively and retained the information, and by the time Crowley employed Wendsleydale's father at twice his previous wages to aid in the winterization of the glasshouses and planning new gardens for the spring, Adam and his cohorts were trusted to water, make notes on, and even tend to some mild pruning of the hardier plants in between their games and play. Privately, they considered themselves Crowley’s apprentices, although they never employed his most used method of cultivation: to criticize each and every plant with a catalogue of its faults. 

 

* * *

 

But, dear reader, in indulging myself I have neglected you! I know you wonder about Aziraphale. What of his departure to London, and his remaining there for so many months, when he who he wished to see most in all the world lay not an hours ride from his home at Wardenclyffe in Hampshire? Why should he be so without cheer upon their meeting, or not communicate in some way in the long weeks following? 

In response, I ask that you imagine a man at a writing desk in a modestly furnished London house which may have been fashionable twenty or so years before, but now the evidence of neglect is apparent to even the most untrained eye. Letters from friends lie open on the desk, books are piled in the corners and on the floor, everywhere is clutter and distraught. He lingers there, and fiddles with his quill, as he has many times in the previous weeks, but as with all these moments before he cannot write, distracted as he is by each passer-by, for it seems to him that all of them are walking in happy pairs, and his thoughts flutter away as do pheasants at the dog’s bark the moment he spies a set of clasped hands. He has been trying to write a letter, but again and again he crumbles the pages. The letter must be perfect and yet none are right! This one too formal, this one too pleading, and this one saying nothing at all! He becomes distraught, wondering how he can read and absorb so many words in so many weighty volumes over a lifetime and yet be so dreadfully incapable of stringing together a single sentence that does not make him appear to be an imbecile. But does he not deserve this state, he wonders? For he knows he once did something unforgivable, and yet, regardless of what he deserves, he longs for absolution from he that once was so wronged. On his sixth attempt at penning the incantation that might serve to quiet the multitude of his fears and longings and desires, the ink gets no further than “My dear -” before this too is balled up and dashed to the floor. The poor man slumps forward, head in his hands, and will make no more tries today.


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you're reading this as it comes out I posted chapters 4 and 5 at once because they were awkward to try and cobble into one.

Crowley had been true to the words he spoke to Lady Nutter at their introduction, and refused to be the quarry of any marriage prospects. Soon was as skillful in parrying the numerous attempts made upon his heart as the experienced Miss Device; a quick study he made of it too, as the parties and gatherings, first hosted by Lady Nutter and then by others in the usual course if introductions made around the neighborhood, contained no shortage of suitors of any gender, and while these little bouts of wit and charm did serve as a remedy to the pull of ennui, to be always on alert for the next inevitable foray was a hindrance to any true enjoyment of an evening. Once or twice Crowley almost made the point of quitting the game entirely, and allowing himself to be wooed by the next pleasing set of features that came along, but invariably he would find something lacking, the eyes without a certain sparkle, the mouth unable to twist into a purse of affectionate disapproval, the dress too fashionable, the mind too little read. The cataloguing in comparison to he who was not there would be plain even to Crowley, who endeavored to forget, and then the anger, his frequent companion of old, would rise up within him and he would excuse himself from the young person in question, else he would do something wild and shocking, like scream. 

So the weeks collapsed into each other, until at last all were consumed with readying themselves for Season, and yet Crowley's trunks remained empty, for despite Lady Nutter’s and Miss Device’s protests and entreaties, Crowley would not be joining them in London. 

“It shall be dreadful without you, you understand,” Miss Device said to him over the rim of her teacup one afternoon in the western drawing room of Pinebrace. She had been working on a watercolor of Mr. Pulsifer, which she did not want him to be aware of until the likeness, which was quite well rendered, should come to its full completion, and claimed the space for herself, successfully arguing that no one was using it, and it should be put to some practical employ. Crowley could think of no counter to this, and so it was that one of his rooms had been transformed into the studio of Miss Device, where they would sometimes sit together and take tea while he read and she worked. 

“It shall be the same as last year, and the year before that,” Miss Device continued, without waiting for him to form an opinion, as was her usual method of speech. “Every evening I shall end in feeling as though I am some chattel up for sale.” 

“You are very much mistaken,” Crowley replied sharply, with none of his usual sense of the ridiculous, punctuating the harshness with the click of China teacup meeting saucer. Miss Device was taken aback, as she rarely heard him speak thus. “It will be dull and gauche, this is certain, but do not say you feel as though you stand upon the auction block. You must understand such talk is unacceptable, even in jest.” At the last Miss Device’s hand rose to her mouth in a gesture of apology, and she expressed that she begged Mr. Crowley's forgiveness, apt as she was to forget herself. Crowley nodded his head, and asked her not to advance the matter further, but the exchange did remind him that he must write to his interests in America before the day was out. 

“Of course, it would be quite unthinkable of me to pursue a line of questioning into that which plainly distresses you! Come now, we must talk of lighter things, will you examine my little painting and provide all the necessary critiques?” Her attempt at diversion was outwardly successful: though truly he could find no apparent fault with her attempt, and commended the project as one which would certainly astound the recipient upon presentation. Miss Device hoped  it would be so, for it would be have to be quite a feat to shake Mr. Pulsifer from his usual cloud of passivity. Crowley, who knew from which this affectation originated and was continually shocked that the usually astute Miss Device could not perceive it, did not disclose his thoughts on how he thought the exchange would unfold, though he hoped to be on hand as he feared poor Mr. Pulsifer might faint dead away to be made so clearly an object of Miss Device's devotion. But the event was not to occur until after the season, as Mr. Pulsifer, like Crowley, was to remain in Hampshire, on the request of his mother who feared desperately for her son's safety among the multitudes of London, and since his disastrous first few seasons proved all her apprehensions correct it was decided to be the best for both of them. Lady Nutter and Miss Device, then, would be without their two closest companions, and would be forced to forge new acquaintances, preferably with the same disregard for decorum and ceremony. 

“It will be awfully good to see Mr. Fell again, at least,” she observed when Crowley disclosed these thoughts to her, and then he was sorry to have done it at all. “It is so unlike him to leave us all winter, but I suppose it couldn't be helped. Mr. Fell never does a thing out of the ordinary without good reason.” Crowley almost choked on the tea he had been decidedly too invested in from the moment Miss Device mentioned the infamous name. Without good reason indeed! “I shall of course mention your name to him, for how could I avoid it when you have been nearly my closest company for these last months, and he is always politely interested in everyone's comings and goings.” Crowley indicated this was acceptable: to do else would have revealed too much, and he had no intention of bearing that chapter of his life to another, trying to fool himself into considering it closed and being wholly unsuccessful as he was.

 

* * *

 

In the due course of time, Christmas with its merry-making came, and Crowley spent part of that holiday at Moonwatch, especially in order to bid a fond farewell to the pair of Lady Nutter and granddaughter, for he should not see them again until June at the very least. The usual vague plans were made for Brighton or Bath, those sort of loose commitments one can always break without much fuss on either side ensured. January found Crowley alone in his glasshouses, carefully monitoring the temperature and humidity with the aid of Wensleydale’s father, a man no less reliable or trustworthy than Mr. Young, despite his unfortunate accident of being born to a family that society considered to be lesser. 

It was a cold and dreary Thursday morning when Crowley was interrupted at his work with the message that Mr. Pulsifer had arrived and awaited him in the drawing room, an unusual event to be certain, for Mr. Pulsifer had never before called upon Pinebrace excepting in the company of Miss Device. He greeted him, and after an awkward exchange about the health of Mr. Pulsifer’s mother and the dismal weather, Crowley made to scramble for a common topic of conversation, but Mr. Pulsifer instead launched into a sudden and lengthy explanation of a letter he received from Miss Device, the objective of which was utterly lost on Crowley until at last the young man flourished a second missive, addressed to Crowley himself, but not in Miss Device’s scribbled, crabbed hand. He felt a dreadful pull near the region of his heart as he recognized the careful copperplate, for indeed, he would know it anywhere, letters upon letters running black with words written in that meticulous hand were even now locked inside the lid of a black trunk in his rooms. But why should such a thing be in the possession of Mr. Pulsifer? About to pose this question, Crowley abashedly realized the man had been providing such an explanation for well on two minutes while Crowley had done nothing but fill his head with anxious wondering, and Crowley begged his pardon to perhaps repeat himself. 

“As I was saying,” began Mr. Pulsifer, without a hint of reprimand, "It strikes me as unusual this letter was not sent of its own accord, though it was addressed and sealed. It was folded inside Miss Device’s, though she made no mention of it. Perhaps it was a simple mistake on the part of the post, but I was determined to complete the delivery personally." He did not add, as Crowley suspected, that it was the adoption of a task - any task, which spurred Mr. Pulsifer to Pinebrace with such haste, in the fashion of a lonely gentleman whose love has gone away and seeks some method of distraction, but he did pause before continuing. 

“In truth, I was curious, for I did not realize that you and Mr. Fell spoke at all beyond that first day at Moonwatch, when you resumed your acquaintance.” Crowley devised some truly terrible excuse, mumbling some such nonsense about property disputes and garden parties, but Mr. Pulsifer, who was not one to press things past their obvious meaning, accepted it as gospel. The letter lingered on the table between them as the discussion turned to Lady Nutter and Miss Device, and how they fared among the wolves of the season; the grandmother bore up the first events quite nicely, a ship riding high on the waves of a terrible gale, and Miss Device was grateful to understand that rumours of her at last had reached the ears of London’s unattached young people, and she was not accosted as she had been upon previous occasions. Crowley would have been a fool not to notice how Mr. Pulsifer coloured upon discharge of that particular bit of information, but with no idea how to express his knowledge of he and Miss Device's mutual attraction nor why nothing had been done about it without embarrassing the both of them, he allowed it to pass without comment. Once the conversation wrung out and there remained no more topics on which they could safely tread, he offered to show Mr. Pulsifer about the grounds, but the younger man was already rising to his feet to take his leave, stating that surely Mr. Crowley had better things to attend to than waiting on him. Crowley bid him a farewell, and then he was left alone with the letter, on its face so innocuous, but Crowley knew it to be as dangerous as an ill-made rifle - liable to go off at any moment. 

Why had Aziraphale written to him, and why had the message been delivered in such an unusual manner? He supposed something could have been misplaced along its journey from Aziraphale’s writing desk in London, cluttered and poorly kept as he remembered it was from a decade ago, to his drawing room table. There seemed to be some other type of subterfuge here, though he could not place it, yet in the manner of a man tying a blindfold about his own eyes to await his execution, he seized upon the paper and tore it open, drinking in the words in greedy gulps.   
  


 

_ Mr. Crowley  _

_ I do hope my missive finds you well. I have been long in conversation these weeks with Miss Device and Lady Nutter, and while they have detailed to me the delights they have taken in the many facets and intimacies of your character, they have not yet revealed any knowledge of our shared history, which, based upon my observations in how those ladies are apt to conduct themselves in possession of any interesting piece of information, compels me to draw the conclusion that you have not disclosed to them the events of ten years prior. I cannot adequately express my gratitude to you on this point, as I can admit I assumed such a reveal inevitable the moment you stepped into the drawing room at Moonwatch, and retired to London to avoid the brunt of the effects from it. I was pleased to understand my efforts have been in vain, yet I remain conflicted on how to proceed. Could it be that you have forgotten, or has time so eclipsed those feelings you once proclaimed?  _

_ I have long despaired over this letter, and in truth, several prior versions now lay crumbled at this writing desk, for when it comes to you I find I lack the ability to draw my feelings into words, a failure which I am sure you cannot help but remember, the way things between us were left all those years ago, to say nothing of my deplorable behavior upon our reunion. Yet despite all your grievances against me, of which I can easily suppose there are many, I find myself still hoping, possibly against any and all reason, we might perhaps resume our acquaintance, or is it I merely hope you do not think ill of me? I will freely admit here that I look forward to the time when our paths might cross again, whether in London or Hampshire.   _

_ -Aziraphale  _

 

Upon his first reading, Crowley was obligated to do so again, and yet a third time after, for all that was contained within those few lines was bewildering in the extreme. Why, for instance, had he addressed him as the formal “Mr. Crowley,” yet signed his own name in the familiar? He made overtures of gratitude for not speaking of their past to mutual acquaintances, and almost within the same breath hoped Crowley had not forgotten it. Aziraphale here revealed had no lapses in memory, that was certain, but then why had he so declined to even acknowledge Crowley that awful afternoon at Moonwatch? He hoped they might meet again but made no effort at all to bring such an event to fruition. Add to all this the unusual method of its delivery, and the letter devolved into an impossible quagmire which spoke to many more questions and provided no solutions at all. 

Crowley resolved himself on two points: the first that penning a response would be impossible, and the second that he would not pass a single restful night until he had satisfied himself with answers. With how well he valued his sleep, a prolonged affectation of his habits would be untenable, and therefore the only thing to do would be to query the source of all his frustrations and agonies. 

But how to make the journey, and do so without arousing suspicion from their fellows? Here the answer came in the form of the dismal Mr. Pulsifer, his bloom fading without the presence of a certain lady in the same manner a flower must for want of the sun. With thus his plans laid out plain before him, he dashed off a quick note to his head gardener with instructions as to how his plants should be tended to in his absence and called for his horse to be brought up from the stables. 

The Pulsifers lived not far from Pinebrace, and he made the journey in a fog of hurried motions and tumbling thoughts, almost falling from his horse in his haste to elegantly leap from it before he remembered himself and adopted more of a measure of decorum. He was shown into a dreadfully close library and made to wait more than twenty minutes before the young man himself was able to receive him properly. 

“Pack your bags, Mr. Pulsifer,” Crowley declared as his host entered the room to greet him. “And bid farewell to your mother. You and I are bound for London.” 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Next time: London, and what the hell happened ten years ago


	6. Chapter 6

The journey to London itself was uneventful, and may even have been described as pleasant by those equipped to judge such things. Mr. Pulsifer had been an ideal traveling companion: he was consumed utterly with his own reading and had no patience or talent for meaningless conversation. Yet as they arrived upon the rooms they had secured in London and several footmen were employed in the disbursement of their luggage, the insidious monster known as doubt, which had been knocking upon all the doors and windows of Crowley’s mind since first he made the decision to travel all the way to town to seek resolution, happened upon a moment of weakness and entered under false pretenses, disguised as reasonability. At the first sign of resistance by an uncaring universe, at the moment the least obstacle presented itself, doubt was preparing to strike, and it leveraged its position the morning following their arrival in town, when the two men went to call upon Lady Nutter and Miss Device, and were regretfully informed by the housekeeper the ladies had gone out, and were not expected back before tea. Mr. Pulsifer, of course would insist on remaining to wait for them, claiming he only wished to keep himself out of trouble, and entreated Crowley to make visits about town all on his own, returning to entire group at the appointed hour. 

Thus, Crowley found himself back out on the streets of London, and to be so without direction for that gentleman was an evil indeed. Doubt, knowing how apt he was to dwell on all manner of negative outcomes with cause to befall him, chose this time press the advantage, and filled his head with terrible notions which ranged from the probable “He will not want to speak with me,” to the frankly ridiculous “he has been in an accident or a terrible fire and I shall never get the whole story or see him ever again.” 

Crowley, requiring subversion, had not informed Mr. Pulsifer as to the true intention of their trip; as far as the younger man was aware, Crowley had, on a whim, desired to meet with some business interests in town, and thought Mr. Pulsifer would appreciate the diversion, and he had even sent a letter ahead of himself to the company he had originally brokered with in regards to the operations within his glasshouses. Now, as a distraction, though if he were asked he would never admit the truth of the matter to anyone, he retrieved the samples and cuttings he had brought along, and made his way to their offices in hopes of being received that very day. 

The tradeswomen were indeed good enough to allow him an audience, heedless of the frantic energy of their bookkeepers and general atmosphere of efficient disarray, and cleared away a place where he might lay out his flowers and saplings to be studied, the most brightly colored of which caused the women’s child, who had been tumbling underfoot since the moment he stepped into the office, to squeal in delight, and reach out chubby hands to grasp the leaves and petals for himself. The ladies were as pleased as their offspring, though expressed their opinion with significantly less demonstration, the misfortune of all those who have left their childhood behind, and assured Crowley they would be flooded with orders for his rare and exotic plants the moment they entered the market, and hoped the plants would be ready to be produced  _ en masse _ before the next three or four years were out, and while there were negotiations for warehouses and shipping which had yet to be conducted, it was determined  these could be put off until there was sufficient volume to be worth the drawing up of contacts and all the little unpleasantries therein. 

His business thus concluded, Crowley wandered the fashionable streets for a time to the increasing mortification of his fine shoes and a growing understanding of why gentleman and ladies so favored spending an excess of their leisurely hours in private clubs. Crowley, true to his contrary nature, had long-ago decided he should grace none of London’s finest retreats with his new money, and on days in which the anger at what the discrepancy between old and new had cost him, he would vow not to sell them a single fig tree, either. Hang the lot of them!  

It is unfortunate indeed for Mr. Crowley to have worked himself into such a state, for ordinarily he was quite perceptive, and had he been of calmer bearing he would not have failed to notice two faces in the street which may have held a candle to memories he would not care to revisit. More regrettable yet, that they were of cool heads and quick recollection, and did not decline to recognize him, and the well-oiled machinations of how they might turn the happy accident to their advantage at once began turning in their heads as they noted his fine clothes and gentlemanly bearing. 

Crowley’s brooding, which had unknowingly already produced pains that would not be recognized until his return home to Pinebrace, might have, if not quickly opposed, built itself up into a fantastically miserable sulk, but its progress was interrupted by the fortuitous striking of the hour, and Crowley was obliged to give it up wholly: he was expected at Lady Nutter’s and such an ill-humor that lingered about him would be the very pinnacle of poor form. 

Upon returning, he found Lady Nutter and her granddaughter engaged a heated debate. While Mr. Pulsifer attempting to make himself innocuous in a corner, the women battled over which event they should attend the subsequent evening. Miss Device eventually won the field in the name of her favourite: a ball at the home of Lady de Guerre. Lady Nutter, who had been vouching for the opera with the claim she would not abide yet another evening in fine company without losing utterly her clarity of thought, brightened when the butler managed interject during a lull in the argument and announce Mr. Crowley’s attendance. 

“Mr. Crowley!” she cried, with a smile that may have been relief if there was not quite so much slyness in it. “It is so good of you to come and to bring Mr. Pulsifer along! Poor Anathema has been quite vexed without his presence.” This was purposefully said a bit too loudly, as Lady Nutter was still smarting after her defeat and perhaps saw cause to humble her granddaughter, the blush which rapidly rose into Miss Device’s cheeks was evidence of her success. “We shall be sure to procure you an invitation, for we could not abide to leave you alone in town while we all make merry elsewhere.” Crowley replied he hoped the woman would not put herself out on his account, as he should not be lost to find his own amusement of an evening, but Lady Nutter, who resumed her usual bearing through the easy repartee, would hear no protest, and ensured he would be as welcome as they upon the elegant doorstep of the de Guerre household. 

“You must accompany us, now we are committed to it,” agreed Miss Device, “I am quite delighted you have come!” Though she gazed upon Crowley as she spoke, he knew it was to the man who stood behind her for whom the statement was meant. A generous feeling tugged at the corner of Crowley’s lips upon the thought that, no matter what his inevitable meeting with Aziraphale held for him, the journey had at least been worth the smiles of two young people neither thought the other could see.  

 

* * *

 

As Lady Nutter had predicted, an invitation for Crowley was procured the next day in the ordinary way of hints and entreaties, and demanded his spending an anxious morning in Saville Row having his coat refitted: its current style had fallen out of fashion, and it would not due to be seen anywhere wearing it, according to the tailor who brusquely measured his arm while tutting and shaking his head. He took tea with the Nutter household, which, he noted, held far fewer grievances than he over their dress for the evening, as Lady Nutter did not care a fig for what was fashionable, the right of a women past the age of trying to please any but herself, and Miss Device had been prepared for the event long before she made the case before her grandmother the previous evenings, with only the addition of an elegant necklace to indicate she desired someone to admire her fine throat, and that gentleman was so enraptured already as to not give a mind to his garments at all. 

Upon arriving at the palatial home, disembarking from Lady Nutter’s coach, being announced, losing his companions, finding a glass of wine in his hand he did not remember picking up but would be rude of him not to drink from, drinking a bit too much in too short a space of time, being caught up in a multitude of glittering luminaries Crowley had no regard for at all, having to be introduced to groups of people he did not know and obligated by the occasion to charm them with his wit before continuing about the rooms, he was beginning to contemplate how he might slip away for a moment of peace, and find a library or courtyard in which he would find relief from the oppression. Yet before such a course of action might be implemented, he was accosted by two terribly beautiful people, one in a scandalous red and one in a white that had gone somewhat ashen in the candlesmoke: the hosts of the entire affair, Lady de Guerre and her partner, who would claim neither title of Lord or Lady, and who was known far and wide simply as Malades. 

“Mr. Crowley,” began Lady de Guerre in courtesy, her voice dripping with all of the polite danger possible to be found inside the confines of a ballroom, and beside her, Malade gently inclined their head in response to Crowley’s deep bow. “We have heard nothing but interesting tales of you, though according to your escorts we were certain you would not be seen here in London this year. Is it not a pleasure to once in a while be proven wrong?” Ten years ago, before he had fallen for someone he should not have, before he sailed the world, before he saw what horrors awaited him outside the seeming safety of English shores, Crowley’s quick smile and pithy reply that indeed it was might have been sincere, but the man who had once intentionally disgraced himself at a ball on a Virginia plantation and held not the slightest qualm about it knew how to recognize the inherent danger in a drawing room smile. There were wars fought and battles won in the rooms of society affairs, and the slightest mistake the rending of one’s reputation, and he understood he had unwittingly come up against two formidable players in this act of propriety.

He was somewhat disappointed in Miss Device, who had fought for their attendance because the pair always held the most amusing affairs, but she had completely failed to mention the unpleasantness they hid in between elegantly draped garments and painted faces, though she was more than clever enough to discern it. With much regret, Crowley considered the volume of wine he had consumed prior to the conversation, as it would be more difficult to weather the storm of wiles in which he would soon be a most unwilling participant. Lady de Guerre fired the first volley, asking why on earth he had ever considered coming back, as the world was a wondrous place with all manner of pleasing things in it, to which the proper response was easily supplied. 

“And yet all sights I’ve witnessed across the globe would pale in comparison to those in these rooms this evening, my dear Lady.” The response earned him an almost imperceptible quirk of Malades’ lip, and he knew there was yet worse to come. 

“Such gallantry! It is so  _ curious _ we never heard tell of you until your purchase of Pinebrace,” Malades picked up the thread handed to them by their partner with practiced ease. “Are you planning to move the ancestral seat?” 

“My family would never agree, you see. We hail from the North, and they cannot think about being so near town without a sudden failure of someone’s nerves.”

“You are made of hardier stock, I am glad to see. And yet who are-” The shade of surprise floated across Lady de Guerre’s face, before the porcelain smile resumed, but Crowley did not miss the falter in her speech, how she focused on something of interest behind his left shoulder, and he was quick to provide concern as to his hostess’ well-being, suggesting that the air was pushing quite close, and more delicate constitutions might suffer in the heat. Lady de Guerre smiled like a knife, and Crowley realized he had missed something dreadfully obvious, and it would cost him dearly.  

“But darling, we were under the impression you were unattached,” said Lady de Guerre. 

“It is as you say: I’ve no commitments nor promises made,” Crowley replied, as careful as he was confused. 

“Then pray, who is the gentleman that so crossly approaches?” asked Malades, and the sentiment was confirmed by their partner, who commented lightly that the man looked as if the hosts had stolen his favourite sweet, but which Crowley knew to be a scathing condemnation. Upon turning to see what had so distracted these two veterans of society Crowley felt breath left his body, pushed out by his heart’s insistence on jumping all about his chest at the sight of Aziraphale, whom he was not aware to even to be in attendance, approaching the trio directly.

“I do believe it is Mr. Fell,” said Lady de Guerre, “though as certain as I stand before you I have never seen him look thus.”

In order to prevent his hosts from bearing witness to a complicated scene which could not fail to be of immense gain to those who wished to use the pain of others for their own advancement, Crowley begged his forgiveness of them, stating Mr. Fell was an old acquaintance of his from school, and he feared he had been neglecting him the entirety of the evening. As Aziraphale approached Crowley rounded to fall into step beside him, and with another word of apology to his hosts, moved away from them and followed Aziraphale wordlessly, emotions sprouting up within him like weeds after a week of rain. 

Aziraphale, now that Crowley was able to observe him closely, wore a pink flush in his face which referenced libations rather than embarrassment, and when they were safely away from their hosts he ducked into an alcove where they were obligated to stand no more than a foot apart.

“What on earth are you doing here, Crowley?” Aziraphale whispered, in a riot of surprise and alarm, and yet to hear Aziraphale call him by his name without the honorific that had hung so sourly between them consequent to their last meeting thrilled him, though he was determined not to show it. “What were they saying to you?” 

“Am I not free to speak to whomever I should wish to at a ball to which I have been especially invited?” Crowley replied, and would that he were able to take back the needles in his words as Aziraphale’s shoulders slumped, and he murmured that of course it was not, and Crowley must accept his apology for his demonstrative behavior, explaining it was simply the shock of seeing Crowley when he had not been expecting him which resulted in such an uncharacteristic outburst. 

“It’s quite alright,” said Crowley, and while the whole of his vocal instrument fairly hummed with all it was bursting to disclose, he knew he must as yet admit nothing more than a mere “I must confess, when I saw you at Moonwatch so many months ago, it seemed as if you had no desire to know me again.” A momentary flash of pain that snuck across Aziraphale’s features vanished so quickly that Crowley, in the throes of the doubt which again had seized him, wondered if, in actuality, it had been there at all, and in his effort to recover the conversation determined to appease Aziraphale’s curiosity on one point.  

“I came to London on business, of course, and to call upon Lady Nutter and Miss Device,” said Crowley, and though he watched carefully, there was no change and he pressed on. “My little hobbies have been proceeding better than expected, and I sought to meet with some of my associates on the matter.” The Aziraphale of years past would have delighted in a full disclosure of Crowley’s endeavours in trade and likely to call him clever for it, but he did not know how he that stood before him, changed by time and consequence, should react to the knowledge, for despite half those in attendance had bolstered their own incomes with marriages to wealthy families not of the same status, to be identified as a gentleman who sullied his own hands with commerce would destroy whatever good-will he had managed to foster. Aziraphale responded with the typical niceties, and Crowley thought it might be safe to press on. 

“I must apologize for not writing you back promptly,” he began, but as Aziraphale sputtered and asked him whatever could he mean, Crowley faltered again. And here it was confirmed, in such a roundabout way Crowley was sufficiently agonized past the point of reason, that though the letter had been addressed and sealed, Aziraphale had never intended to send it in the first place, and it must have been a error on the part of some servant or another. Crowley did not add that it had been delivered to him by Mr. Pulsifer, and folded up inside a message from Miss Device, as he was not at all inclined to parse what implications might arise from such a discussion, not to mention it the distrust it would inspire on the part of Aziraphale for his friends, when perhaps it could be attributed to something as innocent as a mistake. 

“Regardless,” Crowley continued blithely, eager to dismiss the issue of how he received the message in favor of its contents, “there are just a few elements I thought it would be best to clear up with you in person, before-” 

“I understand you are furious with me,” Aziraphale interrupted, harsh and embarrassed. “But take care not to make me into more of a fool than you already have!” Crowley had no idea at all what he meant, though this only succeeded in furthering the upset of Aziraphale’s state, who explained in a clipped whisper he had heard all about the correctness of Crowley’s conduct, how charmed and delighted everyone was to know him, how Crowley was all anyone who was acquainted with him could speak of, and now Crowley was here to observe every element of respectability to the last degree only to taunt him. Such an outpouring was as unfathomable as the details which were the foundation upon which the accusation was built, for mocking Aziraphale had been furthest from his mind, and he scrambled for a response. 

“Can’t we just -” Crowley did not know if there should ever be a like opportunity, and he was keen not to have made the journey to the city for nothing, to leave it just as confused and angry as he had been upon first receiving word, and he placed his arm upon Aziraphale’s sleeve without considering the consequences of what the action might indicate. “Perhaps we might discuss the situation privately?” 

After a long hesitation during which Crowley believed he might have died and been resurrected five times over again, Aziraphale at last nodded, and asked if they might retire to Crowley’s hotel. 

“Of course,” replied Crowley, with bitterness rising in the back of his throat with each syllable. “It wouldn’t do to be seen together in your own home.” Aziraphale pursed his lips and perhaps was on the point of reneging on the idea completely, but instead resolutely informed Crowley that he would meet him at the appointed place. Crowley found Lady Nutter and took his leave of her, claiming illness, and she told him with a wink that he must of course attend to his own health. 

Upon returning to his rooms Crowley ordered wine to be sent up, fretted over the arrangement of the glasses on the table: nothing should look rehearsed and yet all should be perfect. The clock continued its terrible march and just when Crowley thought he might have been abandoned for a second time and started to mull over how long he might be away were he to travel to the Antipodes, there was a soft knock on the door. Crowley arranged his expression into one he hoped precluded calm apathy to tamp down the giddy excitement that thrummed beneath the surface with no regard of propriety at all, and opened the door. There was a quiet greeting before they sat across from each other and sipped silently from their glasses, an awkward mummery of what had once been so commonplace and filled with laughter and teasing smiles. But needs must, and soon the quiet was broken.  

What did they talk about? Why, they spoke of what any two people who had a hasty, passionate affair followed soon thereafter by a morose and prolonged estrangement. They talked about what happened. 


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just a heads up that Chapters 6 and 7 have been uploaded at the same time. 
> 
> I swear to someone I wrote this chapter before the show came out, so any parallels to what was added in to the show are a result of my untapped abilties of predicting the future, I guess. 
> 
> Also, writing this chapter was like punching myself in the face over and over again, so, fair warning.

"You remember my family," Aziraphale began, hesitantly as well he should have, for at the mention of the elder Fells Crowley's hand paused in raising the glass to his lips, which twisted into a sneer before informing Aziraphale that indeed, he remembered them. How could he ever be allowed to forget?

* * *

Aziraphale is born into wealth and prestige and piety in the south of England, and deeds of a great and weighty nature are expected of him. He is the only survivor of his siblings, and his mother pours into him her expectations, calls him publicly her triumph, privately her clay: to be molded and shaped as she deems fit, to be obedient, to never question, to move along perfectly on the route set out for him long before his emergence into the world.

Crowley’s father suffers his grandfather’s debts. The ancestral home was traded away long ago, his aunts now governesses for wealthy children, their own sons turned wayward criminals, his father taken on as the steward of an old friend out of pity more than ability, and Crowley grows up wild, roaming the grounds of the cold, northern estate as if he is the lord of the hunt himself. He runs alongside the riverbank, climbs the tallest trees, heedless of any danger, and speaks to whomever he should find wandering about the grounds. He favors the gardeners most, and the only happy times of his young life - with a father who considered his situation so bitter he repeatedly sought relief at the bottom of a bottle it is a wonder there are good times at all - are those moments when those whisperers of bud and branch show him some new wonder of the earth, a new bloom, or a bulb sleeping through the long winter, eager to prove its worth come spring.

* * *

"Well, my mother and father, they often told me of their great plans for me," Aziraphale stared into the wine in his glass, which had made him slightly cross for vanishing in such an over-hasty manner, and Crowley refilled it without comment.  

* * *

There is no question that Aziraphale will receive the best education possible, and his nanny is traded for a governess before he can barely run across the lawns of Wardenclyffe in pursuit of butterflies, and that particular activity is strictly forbidden almost at once by the imposing woman, who teaches him Latin, Greek, mathematics, geography and history for the whole of each magnificent, sunny day slipping past the classroom windows and shall never return again. The governess leaves only to be replaced by a tutor, and by the time Aziraphale is sent away to school he has forgotten all about grass stained knees and the childish delight in the flutter of gossamer wings.

Crowley stumbles into formal education by chance; the pretty young wife his father’s employer brings to the estate when Crowley is in his eleventh year desperately misses her little brother, and finds something of him in Crowley’s mischievous smiles and rough bearing. She employs an instructor for him, a dour man whose dreadful Latin Crowley outpaces before the boy has been at study two months. He consumes his textbooks and poems as voraciously as he once slurped honeysuckle in the fields, and when he is of age he is shipped off to Oxford, half on charity, half scholarship. No one accompanies him to the carriage, none to ensure his journey has a bright beginning with a friendly face. He clutches the handle of an old black trunk, yet another act of charity by his benefactress, and departs from the place of his birth, never to look upon it again.

* * *

"Meeting you," Aziraphale drew in a sharp breath which turned Crowley's knuckles white where they gripped the stem of his glass. "Meeting you, our acquaintance, our… relationship, it wasn't in the plan."

* * *

Crowley does not know his place at school. He is as clever as he is angry, and he walks with a swagger unbecoming a scholarship case, daring any who might be inclined to disagree with his attitude to make the attempt. There is only one person who he wishes to know at all, the blonde young man he catches glimpses of at lectures, whose nose is always be found within some volume, who doesn’t seem at all like his peers, who has striking blue eyes that seem almost kind. Aziraphale.

“The tragedies are dreadful,” Crowley says as he sits down next to him one day, making observations on the Shakespeare he holds in his hands.

“But they are more lofty,” argues Aziraphale, and Crowley shrugs.

“Do they make you laugh?” Aziraphale admits they do not, and Crowley pontificates the comedies are the true entertainment, for they allow one to forget misfortunes, while the tragedies only serve as sharp reminders.

“I fear I am not reading them correctly then,” says Aziraphale. “For never have they caused me to forget anything.”

“I could show you,” says Crowley, and he does, and by the end of the day Aziraphale is laughing into his Shakespeare for the first time as Benedick and Beatrice attempt to take back their declared love, only to be foiled by their own hands.

There are many firsts for the both of them thereafter, and though Crowley was the initiator of their acquaintance, one afternoon, when they are hidden in some forgotten nook of the vast Oxford library, it is Aziraphale who kisses him first, the pages of their assignment on the Inferno scattered about at their feet.

‘No more did they read that day,’ indeed.

* * *

"When word of… us reached them, they made their opinions on the matter quite clear."  

* * *

It is not long before their relationship is discovered by the faculty and staff.

Aziraphale is all but indulgently patted on the head. It is typical for gentlemen of his station to seek these types of interactions with those of the inferior classes, and no harm has been done to his reputation, for it is no more or less than what is expected. He must not let the boy go to his head, of course; there is no future to be had with a young upstart of little name or consequence, and Aziraphale is told he must think of his future by everyone: the headmaster, his elder cousins to whom he has always felt to be something of a burden and and embarrassment and, most of all, to his mother and father, who compose a lengthy testament to how very disappointed they are, and Aziraphale shudders to imagine what they might feel in actuality to use such language with him.

Crowley, brash and predictable, does not respond how he ought to his severe reprimand, prideful when he should be cowering, surly when he should be gratuitous, and he is almost dismissed outright. He has no care to become a barrister, and the scowls and serious threats that have worked on such students before are lost on he who does not care for consequences. He wants to be near Aziraphale, but Aziraphale has been forbidden to come near him.

How fortunate then, that the drainpipe outside Aziraphale’s room is made of wrought iron, the window latch broken, and Crowley so nimble from a lifetime of climbing through each tree in the gardens of his youth.  

* * *

Lost in the midst of recollections he could not voice aloud, Aziraphale found himself momentarily unable to continue. Crowley, however, picked up the tale, for he knew this story well, was as versed in it as a monk to his scriptures, nay, closer than scripture, for each word and deed was not merely memorized, but emblazoned in his heart.

"I do not recall you having any qualms about continuing as we were, despite their objections."

* * *

How nice also, that the Fells maintain a London residence, where anyone might escape to, should they require the privacy of a few stolen days, and it is there one morning, while the sun quietly steals up the walls of Aziraphale’s bedroom that Crowley proposes as they lay abed, and Aziraphale, with a wide grin and a laugh belying his disbelief he ever could have known such happiness, accepts instantly.  

* * *

"No," Aziraphale agreed. "They were angry with me, but did not resist with any seriousness until after I informed them of our engagement."

* * *

Aziraphale fingers are entwined with Crowley’s while his family listens to his request, told with breathless joy, and give their refusal with hollow, practiced artificiality.

But it is not enough only to condemn the match with all the force a parent can hold over their child. His mother and father make terrible sport of Crowley, and Aziraphale’s cousin Gabriel, who had often mocked him as a boy is on hand to join them as they say with perfect manners that Crowley is nothing and no one, he has confused Aziraphale, such an unrestrained attachment needed to be put behind the both of them at once, lest it take deeper root and the wound should fester upon removal. All the wondrous mysteries of love he has discovered are twisted in their eyes, the proposal most of all, and they rob him of that memory too, in their attempt to alter gentle perfection into mercenary cruelty.

Crowley, in his infinite capacity for rebellion, makes a terrible show of it. He makes mockery of their threats with no appeasement at all, and when the young men excuse themselves from the table to walk out upon the grounds he holds Aziraphale and calls him sweet names and they imagine a bright future of travels and escape, away from the Fells, away from Oxford, away from any who meant to part them.

But the tense miasma which drapes about the house does not dissipate, and Crowley despairs when Aziraphale says nothing to his family to stop their unceasing barrage, and when the pair attempts to discuss the matter he is told by a frantic and uncertain Aziraphale that he just does not understand, that his parents and cousin must be placated, they will be made to come to terms with the relationship in time, but only if there are concessions made. Crowley, who feels he has been patient and compassionate beyond the ability of any other is affronted, furious, and though he makes bold declaration of refusing to stay at Wardenclyffe a moment more, he carves out time to compose a careful page full of detailed instructions and leaves it upon Aziraphale’s writing desk before he departs. 

* * *

"Is that why they all but had me thrown out of Wardenclyffe when you tried to tell them?" The bitterness which tended to hang heavy about Crowley when he thought of that day was in full effect, and Aziraphale flinched.

"You didn't have to leave."

"What else would you have me do? Sit there in silence as you did while your parents and cousin made sport of my family, my prospects, of me?" Crowley paused, realized he was almost shouting. "I left you a note. Did you not read it?"

Aziraphale was on his third glass of bad wine, and yet he still struggled to concede that he burned the letter, and he refused to look at Crowley when he did.

“You - you burned it?” Crowley repeated, his glorious imaginings of what had happened to the missive, misplaced by a relative, destroyed before reaching the fine hands of its destination, some mishap as sad as it was ironic, all vanished into smoke as sure as his all his plans had ten years prior. “Without opening it?” Aziraphale nodded, miserable confirmation.

* * *

Aziraphale, alone at the end of the table, is regarded by his mother, by his father, by Gabriel. His partner has gone and left him all alone, they say with pretended sympathy, and though a note has been discovered by the housekeeper and brought directly to them, would it not be best for everything for the whole of the sad and sorry tale to be left in the past?

Gabriel gently pushes the candle towards him. Aziraphale desperately wants to ignore them, to leave the table, to open the letter and see for himself, but defiance is made difficult without a warm hand holding his, and Aziraphale is exhausted: of the fight, of going against the plan, of battling they whom he should be respecting, who never in their lives before this instance did a thing to lessen his lot, and expected naught but respect and obedience from him. Is it not easier to, in this moment, believe some of their suppositions and suggestions to be correct? Crowley loves him, this is a fixed point, and his family at least cannot reach it with their pretty turns of phrases, but could it not be he also seeks his fortune, that the message is one of goodbye, and not a renewal of the entreaties Crowley made of elopement? Is it, as Gabriel says again and again is the flaw of their inferiors, possible for Crowley to soon forget?

He holds the letter in the candle flame, and watches his name, written in Crowley’s dreadful hand, turn white, then to ash, and he will not allow tears to fall, not in front of them, as he hopes Crowley _will_ forget, forget as soon as he is capable, as he would not wish a similar pain as he now suffers upon Crowley for anything in this life or the next.

* * *

“What did it say?” Aziraphale asked, and so softly was it uttered Crowley at first doubted he had said it at all; the blood roaring in his ears neglected to help matters, the anger at the root of it readily supplying an answer in place of sense and restraint. Not a single word of it was true, and yet he felt entitled to this falsehood, consumed by the sense that Aziraphale had plunged a knife straight into the heart of his memories and cruelly twisted it. Aziraphale had made the choice, all of those years past, to leave him, to put that blasted plan of his family before Crowley’s happiness and his own.

“Nothing,” Crowley replied, his voice sharp and quick as a penknife. “I merely was detailing to you the reasons why I left, and I’m sure that these were already apparent to you at the time.”

* * *

Crowley waits two weeks in Calais for his betrothed with anticipation that fades into distress, which in turn flames into anger. Aziraphale is not coming. And for what reason? That Crowley was not a part of the plan? That their happiness should be thrown aside that the elder Fells maintain their status, that they would rather suffer the scandal of a broken engagement than the blemish of a name not as prosperous than their own joined with their son?

_Suffer love,_ that was Benedick’s line in the play they read together so long ago. _I do suffer love, for I love thee against my will._ Let it be so then. Let the love be isolated, let it be choked by hate, suffocated by anger, scabbed over by loves newer and truer, until it at last passed into oblivion.

* * *

"Where did you go, after you left?” Aziraphale emptied his glass again, and busied himself with such concerns as the pattern of the curtains and the knots in the floorboards, everywhere fascinating to his eye, excepting what could be found in Crowley’s expression. Crowley could not disclose the whole of the account to he who sat across the table from him, close enough that he might brush his hand if he so chose, and yet even that small action seemed as impossible as describing why he kept the letters in the black trunk. The history he does relate is so truncated as to almost be an untruth, revealing as little of his emotions as possible, a bland account of travels across the globe: no mention of the seeds, of America’s dark and festering evil, because while the Aziraphale he knew at school would have understood, the man with him was a stranger.

"Here and there,” Crowley said with a sigh. “I didn't stay in any place long, not until I reached America.”  

* * *

He spends three years travelling east, a year travelling west, settles in America, and a new attachment never comes. He collects plants, seeds, cuttings and leaves, makes notes and bundles them into the trunk that holds only his most precious of possessions. Crowley soon discovers that he has a mind for business, is talented at charming and tempting people into all manner of things and upon arriving in America finds New York, built by the Dutch and run by the speed at which money changed hands, where one’s bloodlines are less a consideration than how fast one might fill up his coffers. Crowley builds his business, shipping goods up and down the eastern seaboard, with a quickness known only to those with a desire to be rid of their former selves, and the meteoric rise of his wealth is in sharp contrast to the decline of his spirits. But never had he thought to consider where some of his goods originate, not until one of his hires suggests that he go down south to perhaps purchase land of his own, grow his own cotton and tobacco, and though he heard tell of it, he is not prepared for the cruelty he finds there.

* * *

"Why did you leave? Why- why did you come back home?"

"I got bored. America is a terribly dull place."

* * *

He learns who does the picking and the planting. He learns how the backbone of the new nation is made up entirely of a class of people treated like property for no reason other than the color of their skin. He learns what happens when they do not do as they are told, and he embrasses himself at a ball in Richmond, Virginia when he throws a glass of wine in the plantation owners face when the man dared to imply that Crowley was one of them.

Though his business is outwardly a success, he knows he cannot maintain it; when he looks out upon his workers and sees snow white bales of cotton fiber and cords of tobacco he sees the slaves in the fields. He joins a club of other wealthy New York socialites calling themselves abolitionists, and while they sit in their circles and argue the morals and sins of slaveholders, and pen letters to other wealthy abolitionist societies in Boston and Philadelphia to raise money for a new printing press, Crowley is unable to discover how any of these actions are to end the evil that sleeps at the very heart of the nation.

He discovers a different society, organized by freemen and those who have escaped the south, dedicated to their cause and furthering it through action, and it is to them that he brings the lion’s share of what he made shipping cotton to factories in Boston and tobacco to London, sets up an annuity that they might continue the work they have started for many years to come, with promises of additional accounts that are unlike all the promises he has made since departing England, in the keeping of them.

His shipping company dissolved, his vast investments poured out of America, he remembers the home he once fled, the cuttings and seeds  in the body of the black trunk, the letters hidden in the lid. He commissions the purchase of a Hampshire property, the building of glasshouses upon it, in the hopes that he might find a sense of purpose in the firm encouragement of wild plants and trees.

* * *

"What has kept you occupied all these years, then?” Crowley wondered, as a thin, pained smile flicked across Aziraphale’s lips.

"Ah - well, you know, I had my books."

* * *

Aziraphale waits. He waits for a second letter that never arrives, waits and hopes in vain that one day Crowley, with a rakish smile and no head at all for decorum and proper order, will come galloping down the drive and he will have a chance to beg the man’s forgiveness. But time passes, no message is delivered, and there are no gallant hoofbeats skidding to a dramatic stop at the door. His father dies, his mother not soon after. Gabriel goes back to Bath, where he can be important at very little expense, and pays no mind at all to his cousin at Wardenclyffe. The note which he should have read, should have heeded, should have memorized and then burned if they so badly needed  to see him do so, turned to ashes years hence, and he knows not where Crowley has gone, could not fly to his side though it might be his deepest desire, cannot even send word, and he imagines that Crowley is somewhere hating him, or worse, not thinking on him at all. What is the plan now that everyone is gone? What is the meaning of this listless existence if he cannot share it? He has no answer for himself, and disappears into his books, for it is only there that he finds solace, that he can forget for a moment his disappointments and regrets. Wardenclyffe grows odious, its once pleasing features dim and dismal, reminders of what once had been within his grasp.

* * *

"I suppose that's the end of it then." Crowley knew that again he was lying, for there was worlds that had not been spoken, forests of emotion and oceans of anger and the feeling, that light purity which Aziraphale had once inspired still burned, and yet how might he speak to any of it without dashing his mask of decorum to the floor and abandoning each effort to be respectable, to be someone worthy?

The candle had grown short, the bottles of wine emptied, the surroundings swam out of focus at their leisure in a testament to his rapid, panicked consumption, and Aziraphale, who had drank more than his share, was in an even worse state than he. Aziraphale, privately of the same mind as Crowley and no better equipped for such an outpouring of sentiment, agreed that perhaps nothing further remained to be discussed, and then tried to stand with legs that shook with the effort of attempting to steady a spinning room. Crowley, being of slightly sounder foundation, stumbled to his own feet and reached out to arrest his fall, and luckily caught him about the shoulders, but this action had the effect of bringing them quite close together, and Aziraphale was forced at last to look into Crowley’s eyes with something like heartbreak.

"I want to remember, if this is to be the conclusion of it all," Aziraphale said, and sought to steady himself upon the lapels of Crowley's coat."I want to remember Before."

Crowley would have wondered about the odd emphasis of the last word, the pronounced Before, but he had no thought for anything before Aziraphale kissed him, slowly and sadly, and Crowley, but for a moment, allowed himself leave to melt into the embrace he had for so long desired.

Yet the empty glasses made themselves quite known when his hip encountered the edge of the table, reminding him that proceeding along this path without a single shred of direct evidence to what any of it meant was dangerous not only for him but for them both, and Crowley would not stand to be made a of fool twice.

“Aziraphale,” he whispered against trembling lips, “Aziraphale wait a moment-” Aziraphale would have sprang back had his reflexes not been dulled by the blur of drunkenness; his fumbling steps almost tumbled him into the table, and it was only again through Crowley’s steadying hand that he did not knock it over, though the candle spilled and rolled out across the floor, dripping wax and flames in its wake. When Crowley reached down to pick it up to prevent further harm, Aziraphale stumbled for the door, muttering apologies, and he was gone before Crowley could think of a single thing to say that would make him remain.


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In which Crowley is subject to three unpleasent conversations and a letter

My dear reader, would I could but tell you the next day one or the both of them set aside their well referenced lists of actual and imagined insults and offenses, that their wounds were bathed and bound up in sober conversation with a far more felicitous conclusion, but to do so would be nothing but falsehood, and I regret to relate the whole truth of it: Crowley did not leave his bed for the whole of the next day, and Aziraphale was not seen outside his residence for the remainder of the week. Those who saw him after would make those abominable little hushed comments which might act with sympathy but in their actuality delight at the distresses of others at how changed he seemed, how diminished. 

Thus, it was quite the sullen pair which departed London for Hampshire four days after the fateful ball. Mr. Pulsifer was smothered by a dreary sort of weariness which implied his happiness might be better found lying in the hedge beside Miss Device's bedroom window than in a carriage driving away from her fine eyes, and Crowley intent on fuming in such spectacular fashion only by the craftsmanship of the glazier did the fire of the anger in his gaze fail to melt the glass panes straight out of the carriage itself as he scowled down at the road. Crowley felt himself foolish and ill-used, and the feeling of Aziraphale’s lips would not cease its lingering upon his own with no thought at all to his feelings about the matter, which were to forget their entire midnight rendezvous just as cleanly as had Aziraphale. 

You see, for one day only did Crowley mope and stew about his rented chambers, reflecting on all that had been said, and much that had not, and this self-indulgent sulk culminated with him driving to the Fell residence two days later, with no thought at all to his intention but to keep it far from him, lest it halt his progress. Would he make a full confession, ask Aziraphale to come away with him again? The aim would never be discovered, however, as the housekeeper informed him, with a sniff and an air which made plain she remembered his face despite the lines which time had drawn upon it, that Mr. Fell was indisposed, and was likely to be so for some time. The younger man within Crowley railed against such a total dismissal, and would have pushed past her and charged the stairs, but the years had collared his impulses, and he felt such a scene would only serve to open himself to a multitude of additional hurts, and he quit the doorstep with a tip of his hat, as a gentleman should.  

Instead, there was the return to Pinebrace, to his glasshouses and his plants, maintained perfectly in his absence by the elder Wendsleydale with, undoubtedly, some help from Adam and his friends. One look at the cluttered floor of the glasshouses indicated the children had been taking more liberties with his workshops than perhaps they ought. While the lingering evidence of their games on  prior occasions had frequently inspired a fragment of nostalgic joy, they now served as nothing but a reminder that Adam, too, would soon be made to suffer the same reality as Crowley once experienced from the opposite bank of the divide: the existence of rules to be maintained, and classes to be separated. The sun was beginning to set upon the summer of his childhood, and he, in addition to suffering all the indignities adulthood brought along with it, as the son of a gentleman, would be beholden to certain responsibilities and expectations his friends would not, and this irrevocable rift would separate him from them in due course, as surely as could any gulf or canyon. 

Crowley left the toys and games where they had been abandoned in a burst of some new entertainment, and went to tend to his plants, lazily sunning themselves and merrily brimming with what he very much suspected to be encouragement, and needed to be corrected, lest the roses begin to believe their failure to produce hips on three blooms he might have plundered for new seeds an acceptable course of behavior.

Alas, as it is so often when one has been pulled low by circumstance, there come continual perils which seek to deepen that anguished state, and nowhere was  this more certain than the case of Crowley’s return home, for not three weeks had he been back at Pinebrace when he received a letter, written upon cheap paper in an unfamiliar hand, but the sinister contents of which could only originate from a single fetid well he wished never to hear from again. Before his eyes had scanned but three of the misspelled lines he dashed it down upon the desk and called for his horse, intending to spend the entirety of the afternoon riding Bentley furiously and aimlessly about the grounds. The message itself professed false hopes for reconciliation and new beginnings for familial ties, but Crowley knew that if he should fail to reply he would be visited by a personal appointment, with the eventuality that these declarations of goodwill would devolve into threats. Well acquainted was he with the particular order, because it was in this exact fashion the parties responsible for the note ruined their own mothers, the sisters of his father, who never did Crowley a wrong turn despite their own misfortunes, and tried in addition to trap his father in their schemes before coming to the conclusion the old man was too deep in his cups to be worth the trouble. It would not be enough to plead a mistaken identity, to disavow his own name, to write to them, "Nay, I am not this Anthony J. Crowley to which you claim relation, fare you well in the endeavour to find the appropriate man." These men were more clever than he should want them to be. 

The details of the letter he would have penned were soon rendered inconsequential: not three days after receiving the message, a pair of rough looking individuals one could not call quite call ‘gentlemen,’  regardless of the titles their mothers could claim, their actions had long since disavowed them of any title, descended upon Pinebrace, and as he alerted Crowley of their presence his butler looked as if he were about to pitch the men out of doors rather than allow the house to be disgraced by the like of them. 

“Are you sure you wouldn’t rather see them dismissed, sir?” he asked rather pointedly, but with a much put upon sigh Crowley said that it would be best if not, and they should be received in the library directly, and if they arrived with the intention of relieving Crowley a certain amount of his possessions, no better way to dissuade them than through lack of appealing options.

There was no greeting at all upon his entrance from either the master of Pinebrace or his visitors, unless a sudden and uncomfortable tension might be called so. His cousins, dressed in clothes which most likely once hung about some finer frame, smiled at him the way Lady de Guerre had, the taller one lamenting it had been far too since the three of them had stood in a room altogether, supplemented by the other commenting Crowley almost wished to stay hidden even from those who shared his bloodline, but such a thing was not like be true, not from one of their own. 

“Hello Hastur. Hello Ligur.” Not a solitary mote of affection could be found in the words, which did nothing to thaw the icy air accumulating with startling rapidity within the walls of the library, but the two men opposite him did not alter in their expression, and Crowley found himself rather wishing they would, as the stoicism was far more disconcerting than any alternative. 

“Lovely situation you have here, cousin Crowley,” Hastur said, ignoring the tattered history and unspoken insults lying thick about the room, to which Crowley remarked it was apt to be far better than anything matching their usual custom, and if they could but just state their business, the unpleasantries might be dispensed with, and the entire farce brought to a swift conclusion. 

“If you labor under the misapprehension you shall walk away from this meeting with a single shilling more in your possession than when you entered, suffice to say you’ll find yourselves sadly mistaken. Unless you have something else to say, I trust you can both see your way out.” 

“Listen to him now, with such airs,” Ligur sneered. “That’s no way to speak to your family, Crowley.” 

“You’d think fancy living like this would have taught you better manners." The last time Crowley had seen Hastur, at thirteen years old, Hastur had attempted to acquire the family's very last reminder of the glory that had once been before their fall from grace, a pocket watch belonging to his father. Crowley has stolen it back and buried it, and none of Hastur's threats or cuffs could induce the boy to reveal the piece's location. Hastur bore the same sad attempt at menace now as he had then. “Nevertheless, perhaps it is best if we get to business, as it were. Our family was never one for polite chats, were we?” Crowley opened his mouth to protest, to reaffirm that they would get nothing out of him, when Ligur tutted at him and shook his finger. 

“Now cousin, let’s not make any hasty decisions before you’ve even heard what we have to say.”

Crowley resolved that he should not be cowed, and what cause had he to be? His father had been dead these five years, he cared nothing for his property beyond the glasshouses, the purposes of which would at least be beyond their comprehension. The pair had nothing with which to threaten or cajole him into compliance with their schemes. But Ligur still fixed his unsettling, unceasing smile upon his younger relative. 

“I don’t believe you, cousin. We think there might yet be something you care for very much.”  

“And what is that?”

“Not a what,” said Ligur, and Hastur grinned to match. 

“It’s a who.”

In detail both excruciating and revealing, Hastur and Ligur, each in their turn, related to Crowley a letter he once sent to one of his aunts, a letter which spoke of an impending matrimony to a mysterious Mr. Fell, of which no one had ever heard, and yet how sad the family had been to learn the happy event had never come to pass! What sort of terrible scandal drove the pair apart, Crowley’s poor aunts wondered, and shared these little musings with their sons. Hastur was sure, should the story be publicized, those to whom such things mattered would certainly be as interested in they as the details. 

To show any weakness here would be bring their duel to an unpleasant resolution, and Crowley blustered that should the whole tale be broadcast from the front page of the Times itself, he should not mind a whit. 

“Not you perhaps, but what about him?” Crowley hesitated for only an instant before disavowing their connection and insisting that he could not know what Mr. Fell would say, as their attachment had been so long ago, but that single moment was enough, and they knew.  

Hastur and Ligur did not demand anything upon that visit. They did suggest that perhaps their cousin would like some time to think about their proposal, with menacing overtures of a second meeting, one in which they hoped he might be more willing and ready to receive them, as family should. 

With a final bow from the pair, Hastur and Ligur left in their usual fashion: to depart when the mood of the room has become thoroughly disagreeable to all but themselves.

 

* * *

 

The injuries, like root rot, continued to accumulate, when just after tea in late March, Mr. Young and his son were announced, the former grave and grim with the weight of unsettling news, and the latter squirming and uncomfortable in his embarrassed and indignant fury, and though Crowley suspected that something of the sort might happen eventually, he had wholly failed to develop any method of phrasing by which the situation might be robbed of its power. 

Mr. Young greeted him cordially, if through the gritted teeth familiar to a much beleaguered parent, and at once launched into a lengthy preface, detailing that he should well understand if Mr. Crowley chose to dismiss him as his agent, once he delivered the alarming news he would presently relate. It was all so precise and exactly what a man such as he should do in the circumstances, and yet Crowley found himself exhausted at length before Mr. Young even began to approach the point, and felt an intervention of good sense and directness might be best for all parties considered. 

“Is this in regards to Adam’s informal apprenticeship?” Crowley interrupted, and clearly that Mr. Young felt robbed of his grand announcement and more than a bit disappointed his assuredly righteous anger at his son's gall had been building up only for the crux of the matter swept from underneath him. 

“He informed me at the outset you were well acquainted of his taking an interest in the plants, but if I have been operating under false pretenses please allow me to beg pardon, should you feel any boundaries were overstepped. Adam is a bright and inquisitive student, I was as happy to share my knowledge as he was to learn, but at a word from you I shall forbid him from the work completely.” Mr. Young, with all the bluster which can be gathered on so short a notice, agreed he had not been at all aware, but so long as Mr. Crowley was pleased with the arrangement of course Adam could continue to visit the glasshouses, conduct his little experiments, and assist in whatever small way he was deemed capable. 

“But I’ve yet to mention it isn’t only my son that’s been taking advantage of your hospitality sir,” Mr. Young continued, seizing upon the thought, and went on to describe Adam's companions as a bunch of hangers-on his son believed to be his friends, who had been leaving a terrible mess about all the fine workshops and running roughshod over the whole of Pinebrace, grounding his assertions in the basis of its complete impropriety by any way one might interpret the word, and he, as steady a gentleman as could be found on the whole of the British Isles, could not have suitable rest until the situation had been seen to. 

“Indeed,” agreed Crowley. “If you but give me their names I’ll be sure to inform the parents of these little urchins that nothing of that sort will any longer be tolerated here at Pinebrace.” He had no objective to do anything of the kind, but had here he looked at the boy he would have seen a face, betrayed and scandalized, a face Crowley would have recognized instantly for all the moments he wore the same countenance himself. “And I thank you, Mr. Young, for your continued discretion. I see no reason that you should cease to be my agent, but if you feel a breach of-”

“No sir! No there has been no error at all on your part, and all on that of my son. Adam, apologize to Mr. Crowley for treating his fine glasshouses as if they were nothing better than a child’s club.” Adam gazed defiantly at Crowley, who was astounded that a part of himself dared to be ashamed for the comments he had made on behalf of the boy, but of course Adam did not understand, and Crowley felt it a fitting style of grim irony that it he, of all people, should be the instructor in this particular brand of unpleasant truth. 

“If you don’t mind, Mr. Young, perhaps the boy and I might have a private word?” Mr. Young thanked Crowley with more gratitude than perhaps required and bade him leave. The instant he departed the room Adam rounded on him in a terrible fury, and told Crowley he was not only a liar, but a bad one at that.  

“Adam, I am sorry to inform you that practically every adult you have ever met has lied to you about any number of things, possibly continually.” There was a tired snap to his tone not originally intended, and he deigned to elaborate on his opinion of those of his own station: the lot of them were nothing more than a hastily constructed set of lies told both to themselves and to each other, and the trick of the whole thing was for everyone to just keep pretending everything was as it should be. The whole of the message was lost upon the child, who felt he was being attacked and argued none of what Crowley said could possibly be true, and if it was,  _ he _ would be the one to change it.  

“It doesn’t matter," Adam continued, his voice escalating with conviction. "Pepper and Brian and Wensleydale are my friends and when I grow up it will all be different. I will make sure it is different." Crowley looked down at Adam, this child who saw nothing but defiance and hope, who had been taken in by all the books and stories told to him in his eleven years, who believed in love and righteousness and the loyalty inherent in a four man band of happy companions, and he told that child through his own cracked heart and a misguided urge to prevent a terrible reckoning he was certain from his own experience was hurtling towards Adam like a star blazing across the heavens, that the boy was wrong. 

“Nothing I say is like to make a difference in the end, I know that,” Crowley conceded. “You won't hear a word of this, because it's the same nonsense you've been told every day in a thousand different ways but you can’t change the rules they want you to live by, and as much as you want to they will follow you everywhere you go. All you can do is get away with as much as they’ll allow and pray you don’t get caught.”

“That’s not true!” Adam protested. “Grown ups are always making up the most stupid rules that make everyone miserable and then try to tell you that’s the way it ought to be! It doesn’t have to! You can fix it, if you really wanted to. It doesn’t matter who anyone’s parents are or aren’t, not really!”  

“My parents were no one, Adam. And I paid dearly for it.” 

“So you’re going to go along with it all too, instead of making it better?” The voice, though only a child’s, was bolstered by the accusations of generations, and Crowley could not hope to form a response, not when he still grappled so personally with the very same revelations, the long years of adulthood playing false dice with their promises of one day understanding, and he felt the pang of something taken from him, drives and dreams that had faded as he was forced along by the turning of the years into a set of obligations thrust upon him without his ever having a say in any of it. 

Adam, who understood that nothing more could be said, took his leave of Mr. Crowley, with the sad promise that the glasshouses would be clean before the day was through: he and his friends would have no more need of the sanctuary to be found within.

 

* * *

 

Crowley received a letter that brought him but an instant of joy before necessity dictated that it must opened, from Aziraphale, who, by the postmark, had lingered in town, though many of the other genteel ladies and gentleman already returned. The letter was barely more than two lines, which Crowley would have burned after first glance if it were not quite so obvious how he would regret doing so upon the dawning of a new day. The letter read as follows:

Mr. Crowley, 

I beg you to pardon the embarrassing display you were forced to endure on my behalf upon our last meeting. I write merely to assure you that nothing of its like shall happen ever again. 

-Mr. Fell 

 

What does despair look like? One might say it looks thus: a man sitting in a library only half filled with his books, with no distress whatsoever on his face, and yet he has read the same page of his book five times now, and is no closer to understanding the words, in their capricious digressions and heedless combinations, than he was upon first glance. Or can such an emotion be represented by a different gentleman, this one standing by himself at midnight in a moonlit glasshouse absent of toys and games for some time now, desperately muttering to a terrified hydrangea that should its blooms not improve it shall end up cast out, alone, and friendless. Perhaps despair can be both.

 

* * *

 

Several weeks later, as May broke in through the clouds of April, Crowley was visited by Lady Nutter, who never before called upon him without Miss Device, and usually by necessity, Mr. Pulsifer, and yet here she came in all her state with no accompaniment at all, gazing at him as lecturer might when one has asked a question of vast and profound stupidity indeed. She barely allowed him to complete his salutation before she proceeded headlong into the reason for her visit. 

"Do you know that Mr. Fell has decided to quit Wardenclyffe entirely, and is even now in the process of having his library removed from the premises?" she demanded, giving him no quarter at all, in a manner which made clear that should he attempt to disavow any attachment or attempt to profess his indifference to the situation he would be feeling the smart of a boxed ear before he knew anything else at all. 

"I did not," he replied, his voice quite different from what he had expected it to be: quiet and distraught in the place of airy and blithe. 

"I'm not one for the art nuance, nor did I believe you to be, and I hope you'll take care not to try and play me, Mr. Crowley, for I have been at this game longer than you’ve been alive. In the interest of keeping those whose company I enjoy near I must come clean with the entirety of it, and demand to know what in heaven’s name is still separating the two of you?” 

To say that Crowley was not startled would be untrue, and yet any true surprise or shock he might have felt in the moment fell away with the sheer relief he might finally unburden those feelings he kept tightly locked within himself for the past decade to the ears of another, and, with a resigned sigh, he asked Lady Nutter how long she knew he was in love with Mr. Fell. Even saying the words aloud in succession struck him like a bolt from above, and should have been cause for the same awe, but Lady Nutter was not awed in any way - the woman laughed! 

“My poor dove, I’ve known Mr. Fell was plagued by some unhappy love affair gone terribly wrong for years, anyone who spent more than a superfluous minute in conversation with him could have seen that. Though I never knew who the unfortunate soul on the other end of it was until one afternoon a year and a half ago, when Mr. Pulsifer mentioned he heard from Mr. Young that Pinebrace Park was to be let by a certain Mr. Crowley, and Mr. Fell’s face went so white I thought he should then and there faint away.” She elaborated on the ensuing year, how Mr. Fell had paid particular attention any time the construction at Pinebrace was spoken of, and Crowley felt his chest constrict when she told him that once, when the four of them had taken the coach to a local concert which necessitated driving past the yet unoccupied house, Mr. Fell had watched each instant that Pinebrace slid past the window, his face professing both eagerness and resignation, with no mind to the conversation at all. Crowley found his footing failing him, and took advantage of a nearby chair. 

“Why did he not call upon me himself?” Crowley agonized. “All could have been solved with a simple conversation!”

“Do you believe that to really be true, love?” It was an uncomplicated question to which Crowley already knew the answer. Of course a conversation could never have been enough, the testimony of the disaster in London would more than attest to it.  

“Is that why you invited me to Moonwatch the first time?” he asked, darkly. “Why a letter to me he never intended to send ended up folded up inside your granddaughter's to Mr. Pulsider? Did you mean to continue meddling?” 

“Ah yes,” she chuckled. “I should have simply waited for you to swallow your anger and pride, or for he to be consumed by an uncharacteristic outpouring of brash confidence you wouldn’t throw him out on the spot.” Crowley sputtered he should  _ never _ , that  _ he _ was the one who had been found lacking the first time round, not Aziraphale. Lady Nutter allowed him his outburst with the patience of one who had weathered many of their ilk before, and when it reached its conclusion she seemed to also have prepared for what would inevitably follow. 

“What on earth am I to do now?” Crowley asked her from behind his hands. “Nothing I’ve tried has worked, and if I sent him a letter or tried to meet him in person he would burn it, or turn me away, or some other such idiocy meant to prolong our estrangement!”

“How did you win him the first time?” Lady Nutter’s gentle query was followed by a burst of harsh and bitter laughter from her companion. 

“Through my complete and utter lack of restraint or regard for the differences in our stations.”

When Lady Nutter asked why actions of a similar nature should fail on a second attempt, Crowley explained the first time had been such a spectacular sort of failure specifically  _ because  _ of his audacity: because he would not, could not, abide by the rules laid out before him he lost the only thing he had ever in his life truly desired and the better part of ten years he had endeavored to contort his image into the type of person who would be received at Wardenclyffe with a smile instead of a snub. But, despite all his efforts, Aziraphale had not come to these same conclusions. Indeed, at the ball at Lady de Guerre’s Aziraphale had accused Crowley of trying to make a fool out of him with his respectability and the correctness of his conduct, and the solution to the acute sense of mystery in which he found himself at that long ago moment was brought into sharp relief within the confines of his own home and in the presence of Lady Nutter. 

“He believes… He thinks that I no longer care for him, has mistaken my observance for decorum for coolness, my respectability for indifference.” 

“You would know better than I, love.” Crowley very strongly doubted this, as there seemed to be hardly anything that Lady Nutter did not know, and felt vaguely as if he were being pitied. “What do you plan to do about it?”

What to do was as obvious as if it were painted in four foot high letters on the ceiling to be observed by any who might seek to but raise their gaze towards the sky, or cut into his sloping lawn by one of his gardeners. He must be ostentatious and brilliant, audacious and, perhaps, even flashy, something the gentry would both disapprove of completely and loathe to exclude themselves from, if for naught but the total audacity of it. Lady Nutter, when she was brought into his confidence a minute later, laughed again, with the promise that should she have to drag him to Pinebrace by force, Aziraphale would be in attendance on the designated eve.  

Crowley was going to throw a masked ball. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Take one wild guess as to what the theme of the ball is going to be


	9. Chapter 9

 

The ensuing weeks plunged Crowley into a flurry of activity and rushed, hurried notes dashed off to Lady Nutter, as he never before planned a ball and found himself tried by the dichotomy between craving perfection and having no idea at all how to achieve it. It was discovered quite quickly that enthusiasm could only be employed so far in replacement of knowledge or experience, and before their decidedly illuminating conversation, Crowley might attempt to avoid such an exposure of his total ignorance of the knowledge expected in a gentleman of his station, but in light of her awareness of his most hidden wishes there was hardly any sense in further obfuscation of matters. Lady Nutter claimed to have attended more insufferable balls and garden parties than could ever be blotted from a single wearisome mind, and thus was in invaluable resource in all that need not ever be done, and much that should. It was she who suggested a masked ball must have a theme: one brazen enough to outrage the elder set and yet with enough allure they should be woefully disappointed to miss such a thrilling diversion, if only to stand about drinking wine in fussy groups for the entirety of the evening whilst muttering complaints to the regard of how little respect the youth of these modern times would show for old ways, tried and true. When Crowley detailed to her his scheme, she clapped her hands and agreed it was sublime, and queried after his costume, though she would insist on declining to explain her reasoning behind such curiosity, and yet no time remained to dwell upon such uncharacteristic concern in regards to his dress, as a multitude of worries to be tended and entanglements to be smoothed consumed the whole of his attention. 

He had not known so many people were to be found in the whole village as he suddenly had temporary staff bustling about the house and grounds, polishing silver, scrubbing floors, dusting bookshelves, laying new linens and hanging new curtains he never before laid eyes on with no notion at all from whence they had come. The details of the menus and the wines to be served must be determined, musicians must be procured, and all the while it seemed each hour brought yet another of those infinite little questions that as a whole seem such trifles and yet nothing at all can possibly proceed until they were tended to, as if the whole of existence would turn upon whether the tables should be decked in blue or green. Each evening of the week preceding the night itself found Crowley lounging fitfully in his bed, his thoughts turning over as often as he did himself, not praying, for Crowley learned young and often how little good might be accomplished in that avenue, but wishing, hoping to whatever entity should care to hear him that this effort, this extravagance, should not be for naught, he should not again be misunderstood, that, upon declaring to Aziraphale he should try to give him the whole of the world, Aziraphale would not refuse to take it, or would at the very least consider it, if the whole world struck him as too forward in the moment. The waxing moon rose and set and gave way to a grey morning that would not pause its approach, however little sleep could be found the night before, and then the tea would be brought in along with reams of a new and altogether exhaustive set of demands and decisions to be made.  

Crowley was not even able to foist the majority of the decisions unto anyone, as he would not allow another to do the most delicate of preparations, upon which the entire theme of the evening would hinge, and this was a careful catalogue made of the plants within the glasshouses, which might be brought into the house safely or not, and what trees or shrubs must be brought along in their stead, dug up from the grounds and placed into pots, or purchased outright, and places found for them after the grand occasion. It had been suggested by Mr. Pulsifer that perhaps the ball should be held within the glasshouses themselves and save everyone a great deal of time and trouble, but after one brief imagining the havoc some of the less discerning ladies and gentleman would wreck on the more sensitive plants, the effort was discarded. Crowley placed each of the smaller plants in the rooms himself with a burst of muttered threats, and circled the trees that had been placed by the gardeners like a vulture before his prey, glaring and daring the bark to lose its luster, the leaves to turn brown or lose their sheen, the apples and pears to fall from their boughs before the departure of the very last guest. 

The rooms of Pinebrace in which the ball was to be held must appear to be so lush and verdant those in attendance should go mad for the beauty of it, and sorely feel the deprivation at the conclusion of the evening, when they must return to their own drab estates which did not contain the most beautiful of all biblical places, for the theme of the ball was the Garden of Eden, and should he accomplish all that he intended, his guests would be as wistful for the evening in their remembrances as Adam and Eve upon the moment of their expulsion from that singular utopia. Word of the occasion already reached Brighton, thanks to a visit from Miss Device to a school friend where she had been uncharacteristically interested in social events, and he learned from that same source that those in the know of society came together in their verdict: it was a daring proposal, likely bordering on the blasphemous, and there was not a named family within fifty miles not engaged with devising some method to ensure their own invitation to the spectacle. 

The emphasis on his plants also had one additional benefit, for should everything go sideways and every actual intention of the evening be for naught, he could always claim the entirety of it was engineered to spark new interest in botany, and Crowley would have the name of a company in London where such new and interesting specimens could be purchased before the year was out, ensuring he would have a tidy sum with which to run away from Pinebrace and to wherever he should end up. Should he fail, remaining within English borders would be inconceivable.  

 

* * *

 

In all the additional complications of the week, it was unavoidable, by the necessity of worrisome dealings to run in packs, that his disagreeable cousins should again arrive to make their demands, though Crowley was ready for them this time, with banknotes stuffed into an envelope given over to a set of grubby hands and accepted with a cheshire grin. He was loathe to entertain their fraud, as he knew he was purchasing for himself a reprieve short lived as it was expensive, and nevertheless there was no method he could see by which to avoid it, not if they knew of Aziraphale, for his cousins were known to employ several methods in order to gain access to funds they claimed their own, and his pride at least allowed him the knowledge that he would pay ungodly sums that Aziraphale might be spared. 

“There’s a good man,” said Ligur, clapping him on the shoulder as he passed the envelope to Hastur, who at once began to count its contents. “We knew you’d not forget the family.”

“Don’t be silly Ligur,” Hastur practically spat, without looking up from his accounting. “‘S’not us he cares for, not a drop, isn’t that right, Crowley? This is all for some rich dandy what broke that soft heart of yours and left you flat.” The ploy to draw him further into conversation in an effort to open up additional wounds was obvious, and Crowley would not be so foolish as to take up the thread of it. Ligur, however, pressed on, making inquiries into the activity that surrounded the house, wondering what one must do to secure an invitation, and Crowley would be damned before they dropped by for an evening’s entertainment.  

“I’m afraid it wouldn’t suit you at all, not your type of people, you understand.” 

“Listen to ‘im, not our type of people, we come from the same stock, the three of us,” Ligur argued. “You can put on all the balls and airs and masks you like, and thems that sit above us’ll drink your nice wine and eat up your fancy cakes and thank you for the privilege, but it won’t make the slimmest diff’rence where you come from.”

“You’ll always be lesser.” Hastur said it with a smile that comforted no one but himself, and Crowley pushed down memories of that same unsettling smile through threats and blows as he refused to admit the location of his father’s pocket watch. “Even to that man you are so keen on protecting.”

“But no worries, cousin Crowley.”

“Family is forever.” 

They departed without another menacing word, but those that had been spoken accomplished their terrible work, and Crowley found himself the victim of a desperate urge to ride to the home of the Youngs and make amends to an eleven year old boy caught up in the middle of what he did not yet realize would be the last carefree days of his youth, for had he not imparted the same cold knowledge to Adam upon their last meeting, and how wretched did Crowley feel now to hear it, though he bore the truth out in his own scars. But he did not sally forth, and throughout the week the glasshouses were emptied further of their treasures, leaving naught buthollow emptiness behind.  

 

* * *

 

There was precious little time after that distasteful meeting, and the evening of the ball Crowley found himself shouting instructions to his staff from within his room as he struggled into his costume. Crowley was to be outfitted in black almost from head to toe, with the exception of his blood red waistcoat and the silver embroidery about his sleeves and his cravat, designed to give the appearance of scales when the threads caught the candlelight. His mask was painted likewise, with fearsome yellow eyes and black, slit pupils. If the theme of the evening was to be Eden, he would be the snake within the garden, the serpent which tempted Eve, the architect of original sin, for was not his intention of the entire enterprise to tempt another into a different type of fall? Well, perhaps it was not quite a temptation, not if what happened in London was not merely the mistake of the moment, but something was still standing in the way, something besides the rage and hurt that blinded Crowley to Aziraphale’s feelings, the reservations of the elder Fells maybe, or perhaps the very real presence of his cousin, who lived in the region of Bath, and still held a modicum of sway over Aziraphale’s actions. No matter the reason, tonight would bring an end to the mummery, to the subterfuge, for good or for ill. With a final glance in the looking glass, Crowley went down to face the evening. 

The attendants began to arrive just as the sun dipped below the horizon, hopping down from their carriages in dresses and coats of unusual colors and patterns, wild masks painted like plants and animals, and all the smiles not hidden behind paper mache heavy with the anticipatory promises that the night was certain to bring. All proclaimed astonished delight in turns by the arrangement of the rooms, and there were as many exclamations over the blooms and leaves of the exotic plants as thwarted attempts to help themselves to a petal or stem: Crowley was grateful for the foresight to hire additional staff to monitor the wandering hands of the gentry. The rooms of Pinebrace filled with conversation and laughter made more grand by the quality of the wine served, and yet it was some time before the party he wished most to see arrived, and Crowley was fairly vibrating with the desire to witness confirmation of Lady Nutter’s promise from several months ago, that should he but name the date, she would use every method in her not insubstantial arsenal to certify Mr. Fell’s attendance. 

Finally, at an hour of lateness that could not yet be described as ‘fashionable,’ the woman, accompanied by all her entourage, made their entrance through the doors of the ballroom. Lady Nutter, perhaps predictably, adorned herself in red, the apple which contained all the knowledge of the world, the key to the lock on the garden walls. Crowley thought that Mr. Pulsifer and Miss Device might be persuaded to take on the roles of Adam and Eve, respectively or switched, but instead Miss Device insisted on brown and green, the tree of knowledge itself, and Mr. Pulsifer in blue with accents of feathers, simply a bird resting within her boughs. 

It was Aziraphale, of course, because it had always been Aziraphale, whose choice of dress worked its way most into his chest and enticed his heart into a startling approximation of a sailor’s jig. He understood well now why Lady Nutter had been so insistent on knowing his own dress: that she might make certain Aziraphale would, not match, not exactly, but that the counterpoint of their colors together would be the envy of any else in attendance. Aziraphale was all in white and gold, with feathers which begged the onlooker to imagine wings. He was the  _ angel  _ in the garden, who watched over the tree of knowledge with a flaming sword, who failed to keep Eve from temptation, and though he meant to play the part of the serpent it was Crowley who found himself tempted indeed, all the connotations of the name angel whirling through his head as he found his leg twitching with eagerness, summoning wells of patience he had not conceived lay within him as he must wait for the four to approach him. He was locked currently into feigning interest in a Mr. Shadwell’s property dispute with his neighbor, whose name was lost among the various colorful epithets with which the gentleman referred to her, and Crowley’s only stake in the conversation at all was a faint hope this mysterious woman might be among those invited, and this unavoidable meeting would make for an amusing tableau for both him and his guests. But at last Lady Nutter was within speaking distance, and he begged Mr. Shadwell’s pardon in order to receive her and her party, at which the older man wandered off to go talk the ear off some other poor victim. 

Lady Nutter and Miss Device greeted him with that particular brand of wry sociability behind their masks that suggested the entire charade merited nothing more than an amused quirk of an eyebrow, and wouldn’t it be so much nicer to wholly drop all the facades: Mr. Puliser’s bow contained much more of a sense of hopeless order to it, and Mr. Fell, when he at last met Crowley’s eyes, pressed his lips into a thin line and bowed as if connected by a hinge, jerky and mechanical. 

But it was, after the proper cordiality of greeting which, he noted, was altogether too cool on the part of Aziraphale, that Crowley at last pressed all of his feelings into a single and simple application for his hand for the first dance. So stunned was Aziraphale it took several blinks and many moments before Crowley’s offer was accepted, and then only with a slight stammer and a hurried nod, but it was done, and Crowley need only to suppress the grin of triumph threatening to spread across the whole of his features, delirious with his success of seizing fifteen jumbled minutes for conversation. He moved away from the party, but not before catching a wink from Lady Nutter, and was at once handed a drink by one of his more astute servants. 

Though he did his utmost to indulge each of his guests with the guarantee of his ear and was the picture of the accommodating host, he would insist on keeping one eye upon Aziraphale, and though he told himself it was to ensure the man should not wander off and forget his promise of a dance, it was for the simple reason Crowley found himself unable to concentrate on anything else. An angel? The name by which Crowley once called Aziraphale in the quiet and comfort of their all too few and brief private moments? How had Lady Nutter coaxed him into it? Or perhaps - No. Crowley briefly entertained the thought that Aziraphale might have forgotten, but dismissed it outright, remembering their kiss in London, Aziraphale’s drawn and sad countenance, such a lapse of memory was not feasible. The third possibility, that such an act might have been intentional, might have been specifically designed to attract the attention of one person in particular, much as his own, was so absurd to not even had cause to linger in his head at all. While attempting to arrange a concerned expression as a Ms. Loquacious delved into a rather meandering tale about a ruined convent she thought to purchase and transform into some sort of business, Crowley watched as Aziraphale barely sipped from the glass in his hand and spoke in short phrases only when he was directly addressed, nervousness and anxiety etched into the line of his shoulders, the quirk of his head as he turned to listen. Crowley felt a creeping in the pit of his stomach, a fluttering of “what if,” what if Crowley was again incorrect, what if Aziraphale would allow the phantoms of the past to once again come between them, what if Hastur and Ligur should decide his bribe was not enough to keep them from Pinebrace this night, and as he was restlessly fiddling with an errant string of silver upon his jacket the call for dancing was made, and he felt the weight of the decision pressing in upon him. Again he must submit to the appalling vulnerability of revealing his feelings to another, again he must surrender his power, his pride, his dignity, to the only person in all christendom with the power to crush it, with no assurance at all that the result would be any different than ten years prior, and  _ yet _ ... and yet what sweetness it would be, should he prevail. 

His body, with no regard to the turmoil which struggled with his mind, long ago made its own decision and was already halfway across the room, each step pulling him closer, drawn along as if upon an invisible string, to the moment where he stood in front of Aziraphale to claim his hand for their dance. Aziraphale wordlessly accepted, and they took their places at the top of the room, earning not an insignificant number of whispers and knowing glances from their neighbors. Crowley felt the hand underneath his twitch, but he could not determine without a thorough study whether such a quirk arose from anticipation or discomfort, and then the musicians struck their bows to strings, and the dance began. 

“You have arranged a lovely evening, Mr. Crowley,” Aziraphale began, stiffly. 

“Not quite near as lovely as your costume, Mr. Fell.” Crowley  loathed to use the formal, and yet he allowed the syllables of Aziraphale’s name to drift lazily from his tongue in recompense. Aziraphale was speechless for an instant, while the two of them obliged to give way to different partners, and when the dance required they clasp hands yet again Crowley ran the pad of his index finger across Aziraphale’s palm, inciting a flurry of stammered letters at which Crowley could not help but smile. 

“You are also… you wear the serpent in the garden quite well,” Aziraphale eventually articulated, although he seemed to begin a different way than which he concluded. 

“As much as you resemble the… the angel.” There. The word was out between them, not in the context he should wish it to be, but lingering all the same, and Crowley realized the single fatal error he made in calling for a  _ masked _ ball: he was completely unable to judge if a blush was creeping up into Aziraphale’s face, though what actions to take should he have observed such a thing was not apparent, and there was a small gasp from his partner that might be one of recognition, or due to the exertions of the dancing, he was not sure. Again they separated and he fixed a smile upon his face as Miss Device came to stand beside him, and she only shook her head before returning to Mr. Pulsifer, quite distraught with doing his best not to tread upon her feet and floundering. Aziraphale was restored to him and Crowley used the opportunity to press further, asking how arrived at such a daring choice, and Aziraphale explained that Lady Nutter insisted on his wearing white and once the theme of the evening explained, the decision fell naturally into place.

“I trust you hold no reservations in regards to it?” Aziraphale asked, voice so small Crowley strained to hear him over the pull of the strings and tap of the shoes upon the boards around them. 

“What on earth could possess me to check you for it?” They were once more parted, and Crowley spent the circle clasping hands with strangers and entertaining thoughts of importing a dance instructor from the Continent; he heard tell of some new dance where partners did not trade and walk up and down and spin about and might have a respectable conversation in the careful confines of a box step. 

“I thought… Nevermind what I thought. It is past.” Crowley could sense the evening slipping through his fingers and felt if he did not that very instant seize it from the jaws of disaster the whole of it should be lost, and to this he mentioned he received the letter Aziraphale composed after their meeting in town, and Aziraphale went white, even under his mask. 

“I hope - I hope the message was ah, acceptable,” he muttered. 

“On this point we must contest, for I found your intention to be most disagreeable indeed,” Crowley replied. 

“What - should I have, if you feel my apology was not-”

“It was not your attempt at amends I found fault with. It was your resolution such a thing should never happen again with which I took up argument.” The dance concluded, and they stood together at the top of the ballroom as the onlookers made far too generous overtures of fine dancing, breathing with a heaviness that had little to do with their exertions. Crowley bowed to Aziraphale and, for all the world to see, continued to hold fast to him far longer than recommended before retiring from the dance floor with a final look, clutching nothing but the frenzied yearning that Aziraphale should, for the first time in their renewed acquaintance, not willfully misunderstand his intentions, and follow. 

Whether he heard this desperate plea from the heart of his dance partner, or if it was to his own purpose, Aziraphale took heed and removed himself in the same manner, following Crowley’s tall and dark figure through the doors at the end of the room and to a much smaller chamber, made for comfort instead of grandeur. Trees and flowers decorated this room as well, and an easel and canvas sat in a corner, though whatever likeness might lay underneath was concealed by a cloth. Precious few others moved through the place, and they were consumed with admiring the apple tree at the center of the room, surrounded by unusual shrubs and strange but beautiful flowers. Here at least, they could find some semblance of privacy without arousing suspicion, though Crowley had done this entirely for the benefit of Aziraphale and his comfort: were it his decision alone he would have bundled the man off to the glasshouses where they might remain unattended for the whole of the evening. 

“You are not - you are not angry with me, then, for what happened in town last winter?” Aziraphale asked when their conversation could be conducted without fear of eavesdroppers, and though Crowley  _ had _ been angry, had been all manner of various unhappy emotions, these ran cowering before the awesome might of the hope and optimism brought about by his discussion with Lady Nutter and the consequent weeks of preoccupation with perfection which consumed him from the moment of the ball’s inception and to what it might lead. But to impart such an onslaught of feelings would do no more than send Aziraphale into an overwhelmed skitter, so instead he responded, quite incisively - “What  _ did _ happen in town last winter, Mr. Fell?” With a sigh, Aziraphale detailed the many ways in which he faltered, been too forward, too inebriated to keep hold of himself and his feelings, which poured out into their conversation and led to its unfortunate conclusion, made more so by his shameful display, which he would again attempt to make restitution for, had not Crowley held up his hand at the culmination of Aziraphale’s speech. 

“You need not apologize or profess anything now. Only - only tell me you did not mean what you wrote in that letter, say that I may call upon you tomorrow, or the next day, tell me I would be welcome at - at your home, at Wardenclyffe.” It was the fullest unburdening of his emotions with anyone since he begged Aziraphale to take his part against his family ten years ago and been denied, and even now he could not bridge that final gap of truth, could not convey all he wished to, or would not. Still he kept the final declaration back, too afraid to be left with nothing. 

Far from expressing relief, or smiling, as Crowley hoped he might, Aziraphale’s countenance grew only more conflicted, and Crowley made a minute retreat from him, regretting having used the name of the family seat, Wardenclyffe, for how could it not still throb like a wound between them, even more so since the Fells passing, how might the son honor their memory by bringing he they despised into their once hallowed halls and acknowledging him as an equal to them. The words of Hastur and Ligur thundered through Crowley, and as he turned to face the windows he fancied their faces pressed against the glass, making their appearance not to ruin the evening but simply to laugh at his misfortunes, at his aspirations dashed to pieces, tricks of candlelight in his agitated state. 

“It doesn’t have to be Wardenclyffe, you are welcome here at Pinebrace, you’ve always been -” Crowley was well aware he was scrambling and desperate, but had Aziraphale been able to form a response to this, it would have been drowned out in the sudden press of the crowd that entered the drawing room, chattering loudly with excitement and drink upon witnessing the magnificent apple tree, and no more peace was to be found there at all: with a despondent heaviness Crowley was obliged to make a full withdrawal from the field, though not before reaching through the space that still insisted on separating them to pluck a single feather from the shoulder of Aziraphale’s coat, and this time he knew he had not imagined the tremble of the other’s hand, or the sharp breath which escaped him. 

The remainder of the night passed in a strange dream of swirling sounds and colors which appeared at once fluid and disjointed, one moment he was dancing with Miss Device and she was begging him to tell her all that transpired between him and Mr. Fell, the next he found himself seated at table across from Mr. Young who was detailing to him the schools he should be considering for Adam and quieting the impulse to tell the man to let the boy alone, to let him run wild with his friends for as long as he should be allowed, then Lady Nutter was seated beside him on the sofa in his small library, patting him on the cheek and telling him it would all work out alright: finally he escaped the oppression of the house through a side door, where he found Mr. Shadwell locked in conversation with a woman he did not recognize, and would have called the discussion quite heated if he were not sure exactly what manner of heat was being stoked between the pair, and thought better of interrupting. All the while he looked again for a flash of white and gold and feathers, and it could not be found anywhere. 

It was midnight when those who left all their exertions upon the ballroom floor or their sensibility in their emptied glasses first began to depart, and thus induced a trickle of like minded companions to do the same, though as with any social gathering there were some that chose to linger long after the host might wish them gone; among these were Lady Nutter and her party, and with them he again caught sight of Aziraphale.

He believed their interaction to be yet another dismal failure, and thus he was astounded that as the group made to take their leave of him, Aziraphale pressed in close, clutched tightly at the silver embroidery on his sleeve, and claimed in a hurried whisper which brushed against the shell of Crowley’s ear - “Should you wish to call upon me - at any time of the day… or night, I should be helpless to refuse you.”   

As soon as the pledge, for Crowley would consider it so no matter the consequences, had passed his lips Aziraphale departed, and among the last remaining throng of compliments to the evening and good-byes, Crowley stared after Lady Nutter’s coach until he could see the dim flicker of its lanterns no more.  

Twenty minutes after the last of his guests rolled down the drive, Crowley stood in the western drawing room, sampling one of the apples from the tree, and it was here Crowley came into possession of a notion so ridiculous, so absurdly laughable and yet so fitting that it would not quit its persistence. Any time of the day or  _ night _ , was that not precisely what Aziraphale said. This night, come to think of it, where the moon shone glorious, round and high in the sky, casting the whole of the world in silver, this night would be ideal for a short moonlit ride, for surely Bently would be hard pressed to miss his footing upon the road. Crowley finished his apple, and made for the stables.

* * *

 

Aziraphale bid a good night to Lady Nutter and her granddaughter and Mr. Pulisfer, the latter two of whom could not be roused from their slumber upon each other, and the former who acknowledged him with a sparkling smile. After the revelations and delights of the evening he experienced, the walls of Wardenclyffe rose up before him like those of a tomb, and just as foreboding. The doorway yawned like the dark and gaping maw of some terrible beast, and would that he could but stay within the light of Pinebrace, within the sphere of - But he said what he must, and there was nothing to do now but wait as all of what had been deemed foolish and impossible must now be reordered into new categories. There was no place in the tidy bookkeeping of the Before and After for the events just transpired, he would be required to create a third title which he must assign to them, as Crowley’s words and actions could not conceivably be mistaken for indifference or coldness unless by an imbecile of the highest order. 

But within those walls he grew more unsure. Wardenclyffe was the estate of his parents, where they raised him to be what they wished he should, where they denied him their blessing, where they coaxed and cajoled and threatened him until he denied Crowley himself. What respect would it show for them to disregard their wishes so completely, when they had not been in the ground more than seven years? Yet they had been  _ wrong _ , wrong in every sense, and it cost them nothing, and Aziraphale all! What respect should he show them, when they had given him none, yet without their influence, their wealth, would he ever have - perhaps inviting Crowley was a mistake. Should he call upon him at Pinebrace, as each moment it seemed more likely that Wardenclyffe itself would raise up every defense at the intrusion. 

It was with these distractions that he, without even removing his costume, entered his much diminished library to find a volume he had not taken up in many years, for it was not until this very evening he thought he might again find joy within it. It was easily located on the thinning shelves, as the lion’s share of the books had since been relocated to London, and yet would they have need to remain so far, as the object of the retrenchment, to remove himself from the presence of a certain person who did not wish to see him, was conducted upon faulty information and perhaps more self-pity than wisdom. 

Thus he set the candle down upon a small table beside a much loved chair, and opened  _ The Collected Works of William Shakespeare _ , which found him again as he had once been shown by a younger man with honeyed eyes and a crooked grin, who seemed to have no desire at all but to give Aziraphale cause to smile, and he flipped through the well thumbed pages to the play Crowley returned to most often when he had been in confidence of such matters, and began to read, willing that the brightness of the love between Benedick and Beatrice might whittle away at the dark, binding shadows that wrapped Wardenclyffe in their suffocating embrace and filled him with melancholic thoughts. 

So much delight did he find there in the long neglected lines, as fitting a balm as they to the tumult of his rushing worries, that he did not notice the candle’s precarious perch, nor the gentle flutter of the curtains towards the flame.

 

* * *

 

Anticipation, as Crowley spurred Bentley on, welled up within his heart, the whole of it tracing those same paths so used to a series of emotions significantly less pleasing. He felt much the same as he had so many years ago, as he would sneak through the school under cover of night and climb in through Aziraphale’s window so as not to be seen, the small shocked smile on his love’s face as he crept in over the sill, those soft hands invariably holding some book or other which would be put aside as the hands turned to less ethereal delights. Crowley tried to recall, wistfully, if there were a similar situation at Wardenclyffe, a drain or an ivy trellis underneath the windows of the library, for Aziraphale would not have gone to bed after his departure from the ball at Pinebrace, not when the clock had hardly struck three and Crowley had known him to read until very early in the morning indeed. Would his arms still have the strength they possessed at twenty-two? But no, he could not - 

Whatever little musings Crowley would have had departed the moment he crested the hill and the Fell estate was laid out below him, for once he saw what awaited him there he clutched at the bridle and kicked Bentley into a full gallop, muzzling the shout climbing up his throat all the while, room in his mind for nothing at all save Aziraphale and the full, abject, awful terror for him.  

Smoke billowed from the windows of the Wardenclyffe library, and behind those frightening clouds, flashes of flame. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Look, _look_ the ghost of Jane Austen and I were writing a very nice little regency romance and then Charlotte Bronte crashed through the metaphorical ceiling when I was planning this out weeks ago. I promise happy resolutions will find us next chapter, with an final chapter to follow after.


	10. Chapter 10

On the not infrequent occasion of some calamity or disappointment in his life, Crowley felt quite acutely he lived under constant punishment for some incomprehensibly awful transgression, but never was he permitted an understanding of who understood themselves so egregiously offended, nor why the consequences of his sin should be so dire. Why other explanation could be found for the long line of missteps and misfortunes, why else should his life been traded for his mother’s, his father not spoken to him but with the slur of drink and the weariness of cumbersome misery, he handed the merest scraps of kindness while others received it in abundance despite having done nothing more to distinguish themselves than he? Why had he been so unworthy as to once lose the esteem of the only person who never looked him in the eye but to see his equal in measure, who, during the course of the relationship should reserve his love, miraculous and ineffable, for Crowley alone? 

Never was he more certain of this perpetual state of punishment than as Bentley’s hoofbeats drummed out an anxious gallop towards Wardenclyffe, for now, upon the turning point of their lives, when he might have found the termination of a series of long and tortured questions,  _ Aziraphale  _ should be made to bear the consequences for Crowley’s unnamed crimes,  _ Aziraphale  _ who should suffer for the cruel twists that fate was determined to send his way. This was a circumstance that was not to be borne, and as his head beat with the relentless tattoo, “not this time, not this time,” Crowley tested Bentley to the very limits of his capabilities, eyes scarcely removing themselves from the windows of the Wardenclyffe library: a terrible vigil indeed, watching for any sign of the fire’s escalation, or of a figure calling for help, silhouetted against the flames.  

When at last Bentley’s hooves skidded into the drive Crowley, in his haste, nearly dove from the horse with calls of fire to hammer upon the front door, thrown open in short order by a harangued footman in his night-clothes, his complaint, “This really is  _ too  _ much, Mr. Crowley,” dissolved in the beats of Crowley’s boots and his broken, heartsick howl - "Aziraphale, where are you?" as he thundered past the man and up the stairs to the second floor, his hopes that at any moment Aziraphale might appear to assess the commotion and thus and attest to his own well-being rapidly diminishing with each second eclipsed. 

“Do you not smell the fire?” Crowley spat back at him, as heedless of anything which could be said to resemble decorum as he was of the multitude of footsteps and cries both above and below, the whole of the house roused from its gentle dreams into the appall and dismay of Wardenclyffe’s plight. “Where is Aziraphale?” The footman, still recovering from Crowley's utter disregard for his authority, paled at the question, sputtering that the master was usually found in the library at this hour, the knot of cold dread that sat like a leaden weight within Crowley’s chest coalescing with each word. 

An completely new set of concerns overtook him: whether his memories were accurate, whether the library lay to the right at the stairs or a left, whether his mind deceived him in its distress. Yet he need not have doubted, as many times, with wishings and imaginings conducted in the cabins of ships, tents under a sparking desert sky, beds in a city hungry for money and accepting all who might add to its consequence, he traced the route from Wardenclyffe's door to the library in his mind, and though often he feared what he should find at the conclusion of the journey, never had he considered it might end thus.

 Always in daydreams past there remained the benefit of time, time to repair the fractured promises between them, or to waste away in the old habits, pride and anger warring for his soul, but now not a single spare moment was left to be found. The snake in the garden, the tempter, how laughable it seemed now, how absurd in its hubris! Aziraphale was already tempted, had been so since long before Crowley’s return, and it was Crowley’s own rage at a decades old slight which blinded him to the truth of it. How much time was wasted wallowing away in a useless, self imposed exile? He could have ridden to Wardenclyffe the day he arrived in Hampshire and been given the whole of his wants and dreams in an instant, nay, no need to wait until Hampsire, why had he not turned around in Calais when Aziraphale was a day too late, or in Alexandria as he crumbled his twelfth letter to Wardenclyffe, or in New York as he spent another fitful night grappling with his own conscience and fiercely wishing for the calming and kind insight of the one he left behind?

A whine slipped past his lips, in between his shouting for Aziraphale, and had its form been articulated it would be a sad plea indeed, that Aziraphale should not be punished for Crowley’s own cowardice, that if Aziraphale could but be spared Crowley would himself plunge into the flames as many times as whatever entity he so wronged even before the moment of his birth should require of him. 

Smoke billowing from behind the library door into the hallway stayed the uncertain candle of his rushing thoughts, wrenching tears from his stinging eyes and coughs from his invaded lungs, and when he made room among the strange piles of books littered about the hall whose presence he could not begin to fathom and stood to the side of the door to throw it open he felt a sudden burst of heat rush past him, which had he been foolish enough to stand in the way of it would have pitched him physically backwards. With the foresight to shield his face from the blaze with his arms, he barged into the room, again screamed Aziraphale’s name. The back wall was awash in flames which made rapid, ravenous advances. 

Many times Crowley read of the phenomena of one’s blood turning cold, but never before been privy to the experience until, dropping to the floor and groping through the thick smoke, he finally caught sight of Aziraphale sprawled out upon the Turkish carpet, overcome by the fumes, books scattered about him. At once Crowley crawled towards the figure, part of him railing against the man for so obviously trying to save his books before himself, the mystery of the stacks of volumes at the door solved. The heat baked the skin of his face as he hooked his hands into the shoulders of Aziraphale’s waistcoat and attempted to draw him away from the spreading flames, repeating his name again and again, forcing his own eyes away from their pressing need to track the rise and fall of his laboured breaths. At his touch Aziraphale was weakly roused from his stupor, but only to clutch one of his precious books to his chest, not responding at all to Crowley’s repeated begging until Crowley took the book from him and he cried out as if in pain. The book was hurriedly stuffed into a pocket of Crowley’s coat before he pulled Aziraphale out of the room and out onto the floor of the corridor, where the whole of the house was pitched into unmitigated disarray, servants running through the estate, glass breaking, cries and shouts from above that the fire had begun to consume the second floor. 

Mere minutes ago, on the road, Crowley wondered at the strength in his arms, entertained the thought of surprising Aziraphale as he had in their youth, but now no question at all remained as Crowley lifted Aziraphale off the floor and onto his back, his head cradled in the warm groove between Crowley’s neck and shoulder, mumbling incomprehensible words into Crowley’s ears that had the pleading tone of apologies. The latter cared not a whit for the strain in his body as he staggered down the steps and out the front door, where a crowd was gathered, members of the household and those living upon the estate awoken in the middle of the night with the call of fire, to help or to take in the spectacle, for there is not a one among us who would not spring from their bed in order that a tragedy might not be missed. Everywhere was chaos, as genteels and tenants alike ran a line with buckets of water, servants appearing from the back and sides of the house, arms laden with treasures from the house they were determined to save, children of those employed in aiding the crisis standing about in small groups, elder siblings with the younger in hand, watching the flames, with their peculiar, hypnotic dance, in the manner of those fascinated by the beauty and comprehend none of the cost.  

Crowley was met with a collective gasp from those gathered as he emerged from the doors with the master of the estate upon his back, as the housekeeper especially, who long despaired that just such an unfortunate event was an eventuality, loudly had been lamenting to all who would heed her that the good Mr. Fell was surely burned to a cinder in his chair just like his books, cursing everyone, including herself, for what seemed an inevitable loss. But at Crowley’s appearance the entirety of the small crowd took heart, taking up at once the cry for a doctor from Crowley himself, and when hands came to relieve him of his burden they earned a snarl for their trouble until they took themselves away again, and yet it was with absolute gentleness that Crowley bore Aziraphale away from the drive and towards the stables, setting him down against a low wall. 

“Aziraphale?” he pleaded, cupping the smoke stained face, listening to the lungs that struggled for each and examining the unfocused, flickering eyes. But no glimmer of recognition was to be found at all, and Crowley stood up and would have screamed again for a doctor if not at that moment there came a tug upon the singed tails of his coat by a face familiar and yet so incongruous to its surroundings it was a moment before he recognized the visage as one of Adam’s friends, the girl, Pepper, whom he had not even known lived upon Wardenclyffe’s grounds. 

“The doctor has been called for, sir,” she explained. “My mother lives just this way, she says you should bring him there.” 

Crowley could have carried Aziraphle, and would have, if a small division had not followed them from the house to offer again their assistance, which this time was accepted. A cart and some blankets were pulled from the stables, and thus was Aziraphale transported the short distance to a small, cottage, where a tall woman with curly black hair met them at the door, and then bade the majority of the group be gone again once Aziraphale had been laid upon a narrow bed in the back room, with the exception of Crowley, whom she showed to a chair and provided a drop of strong drink in a chipped cup. His seat was unbalanced, a weight hanging in his coat, and when he pulled it out to see the book he had pulled from the fire along with Aziraphale, the title,  _ The Collected Works of William Shakespeare _ , was made blurry by the tears which threatened to spill over the cracked leather, the book they had read together on that very first day, so long ago. 

 

* * *

 

Crowley was awoken by a fit of coughing in the vicinity of his ear, and with a start he raised his head from where it fell over the back of the chair, no thought given at all to the sharp pain in his neck, to see Aziraphale was awake and struggling to breathe through unwieldy coughs. Crowley groped about for a handkerchief and pressed it into his open palm, turning away from the black splotches which bloomed upon the white linen, and waited for the affliction to subside before offering him a drink of water, which was drained with small, tepid sips. 

“Crowley?” Aziraphale rasped, as his senses returned, and with a reticent, apprehensive glance he revealed in a strained whisper he could not remember where he was, nor the circumstances which had landed him there. “I remember coming home from the ball,” he began, but there was nothing further. He turned to Crowley for an explanation, and as Crowley, mildly as he was able, recited that Aziraphale, exhausted from the evening, fell asleep in his library and left a candle burning by the window, Crowley watched as horror and dismay in their turns performed a gruesome dance across Aziraphale’s countenance, whatever memories of the previous night’s that remained slotting into their proper place and with them the horrors their recall must bring. Crowley longed to take the hand that clenched white against the bedclothes, but had no wish to further accelerate the whirl of emotions in which Aziraphale must find himself, and until he was sure how such an action would be taken he must yet hold back. 

“My library?” Aziraphale whispered, though it was sure he already knew the answer, and Crowley shook his head. 

“I couldn’t - I tried -” he stammered, and here he pushed that copy of Shakespeare into Aziraphale’s hands, the pages of which were saturated with the heavy odor of smoke that, like an ill-bred guest, would not quit when it was no longer wanted. “This… this was all I could save.” Aziraphale stared at the book in his lap, at the fingers stained with soot which had pushed it there, at Crowley’s ruined suit, the silver embroidery he had so admired not a night ago gone weary and gray, the anxious expression in those amber eyes, and he shoved the book aside to take Crowley’s hands in his. 

“I’d wager that is not all you saved,” he said, and Crowley who had been walking the fine line at the border of a decision, threw himself headlong into uncertainty and embraced Aziraphale fully, with no regard to how he trembled or any sense of propriety, for without the solid, physical truth that Aziraphale had not perished in the terrible fire that had taken most of Wardenclyffe with it Crowley knew he would be utterly unable to continue the conversation. He needed to hear Aziraphale's quiet sigh against his shoulder, to feel Aziraphale's warmth, the sun to the flower in Crowley's soul. His tongue burned for all it wished to say, all the smaller fears and desires falling by the wayside as the complete comprehension of how he just managed to escape the greatest terror of all loomed before him: a world without Aziraphale entirely. He pulled away, despairing at the sudden hurt and confusion at the motion in the other’s eyes, but prayed it would be but temporary. 

“Aziraphale,” he began, and the startled breath the other gave at the utterance of his name was all the encouragement needed to continue. “Aziraphale I can no longer play this game of society’s, this, this farce of subtleties and manners. If you truly have no regard, no feelings at all left for me, I shall depart this instant and no longer -” here Aziraphale’s hands clutched Crowley’s, almost reflexively, and Crowley saw no reason to further that particular line of speech. “I love you,” he said to Aziraphale, all the means by which we are told we must not lest we open ourselves to further wounds: directly, simply, honestly. “I have loved you since first we sat under that tree and read together, and I have never wavered in this, though I do confess there were times, convinced of your own indifference, when I desperately wished I might.” Aziraphale reached out to smooth his cheek, to soothe those frantic eyes and calm the halting words. 

“My poor dear," Aziraphale breathed, "In many things have I faltered, but never in my regard for you. Of course I love you. I always have.” 

Had Crowley the opportunity to imagine it a thousand different times and as many ways, he could not begin to approach the estimation of the affect those simple words would have upon him. Aziraphale's eyes again took on their once familiar softness, and Crowley found shining there all the goodness in the world. Was this then, his transgression? Was loving Aziraphale more than he ever should have thought himself destined, and the woes of his days merely seeking to right the balance, for certainly none should be as content as Crowley was to hear him speak thus and yet be allowed to remain with decent society. Aziraphale, struck by a series of thoughts so similar Crowley would have blushed to the tips of his ears to know them, bowed his head, trying to fish his words from the depths of his mind.

“I don’t - How can you forgive me for what I did? I took the safer, surer path, I burned your letter!” Aziraphale continued, and Crowley, who could not conceive of something more absurd, began to laugh. 

“Oh angel,” he said when he had recovered, and again he was free to use the name, how wonderful it was, how Aziraphale beamed to hear it from his lips once more! “It is my own fault that you have been beleaguered by such questions, for had I conducted myself from the beginning as I ought, you need never have doubted at all. I tried - in London, after our ill fated conversation - the very next day I went to your townhouse, but the housekeeper said you were indisposed, and should be so for some time. I thought you were refusing me, and I left in haste. I should have stayed, should have heard the denial from your own lips, and for this I must claim the error on my part.” 

Aziraphale traced the line of Crowley's jaw, to affected for the moment to quickly respond. 

"I never stopped hoping," he explained at last. "I waited for a letter, listened for hoofbeats, listened for the groan of a drainpipe or a trellis, always wondering where you were, tried to uncover your whereabouts, but no one knew where you had gone, or they would not say, and though your letter-"

“I lied to you,” Crowley interrupted, pulling away regretfully. “When you asked me about the letter you burned in London, I did not disclose - It was - I had arranged everything for us, to elope together, the way we had planned before it all went pear-shaped. I never - it was never a goodbye.” 

 Tears glimmered in his eyes as Aziraphale smiled at Crowley’s proclamation, and then there was nothing left to do but to lean forward and press his lips to Crowley’s, who was stunned into stillness and silence for a long moment before at last responding in kind, his body remembering, one hand delicately splayed against Aziraphale's throat while the other ran through the blonde thicket of his curls, his own heart - no heart was meant to beat so fast! 

"We have both been quite foolish, haven't we?" Aziraphale asked against Crowley's lips, and Crowley replied that such was a polite way to explain their mutual idiocy indeed, for he would have employed a much stronger vocabulary for at least his own actions and feelings. Aziraphale laughed softly, though it ended in a hackneyed cough, and Crowley, with eyes gone wide with care and concern, eased him down upon the bed. 

“The doctor is of the opinion I should limit your excitement and allow you rest, though I suppose we’ve failed at that together as well.” He did not think to add that the doctor had tried to bleed him, and Pepper’s mother, whom Pepper had professed to Crowley as they sat together as the best of the local midwives, had nearly thrown him out on his ear in her disgust. Aziraphale settled back against the pillow with a smile, and would not relinquish Crowley’s hand. 

“If I should follow his orders, would you - that is to say you must not feel required, not as such -” Crowley raised Aziraphale’s hand to his lips and placed a kiss there, soft as the flutter of a butterfly’s wing. 

“Of course I will remain here,” he said, and Aziraphale’s infinite relief escaped him in a sigh. “I imagine that since we have finally come to an understanding it will be quite impossible to be rid of me.” Aziraphale wished that they were at Pinebrace, where he was sure the bed was not quite so narrow, as he would devise some method by which Crowley would be obliged to lie down beside him. But as this was not Pinebrace, he contented himself with the fixed press of Crowley’s hand in his. 

Have they not earned the honor of several hours privacy? Dear reader, let us leave them, for the moment, to their rest. 


	11. Chapter 11

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's finally here! Thank you all for your patience, and please enjoy, at last, the thrilling conclusion to this winding tale.

As soon as could be done, Aziraphale was removed to Pinebrace, where nothing would suit but he be given Crowley’s own chambers, from which Crowley himself was henceforth never far removed. In keeping with his original intent upon the reaffirmation of their mutual affections, he cajoled Crowley into bed beside him before the first night gave way to dawn, an affectionate grumbling of “Budge over, angel” the only indication Crowley saw cleanly through his complaining of a chill for the ruse it was, and sooner than offer to stoke the fire or fetch more blankets, he cut to the heart of the matter as he removed his boots and slid in beside him, to sleep as comfortably and soundly as he had not done these ten years. 

 With the nights whiling themselves away in content and yet chaste sleeping, Crowley sought some way to fill the long hours of the day, and in this endeavour combed his entire estate in search of each book he possessed that Aziraphale be supplied with sufficient distractions as he recovered. Though in truth, for the first time in a very long while, Aziraphale found more relief in conversation than in the written word, doubtless a statement to the recent improvement in the quality of his company than to the condition of Pinebrace’s library. He was unable to speak at any length, or much above a whisper, given his infirmity, but he enthusiastically used the sad picture he was sure he made to at last pry the tales of Crowley’s wanderings from him. Crowley found the first step, Calais, the hardest to describe, and deferred to speak instead of Paris, Venice, Alexandria and Constantinople, the long journey across the Atlantic, and all which happened in America, including the organization he would continue to support through the development of the plants in his glasshouses. All the worries he once held, that Aziraphale would not understand, that he would judge Crowley for being in trade, for the incident in Richmond, were comical at a distance, for in the now, Aziraphale smiled and gasped at all the right places in the telling, and was shocked only by the measure of restraint Crowley had shown, as “I’m sure you remember my dear, I have known you to get quite heated when someone so much as implied an untoward sentiment.” 

“Things were different then, angel,” Crowley said with a smile, leaving the impetus for the alteration unspoken, that in America the boldness he displayed with Aziraphale at his side had been absent, and yet he was sure from the barest glimpse of his countenance the other could guess at the words unsaid between them, and moved to take Crowley’s hand in his. There were more stories to tell, of returning to England, the farce of the renewed acquaintance, the ball in London, Hastur and Ligur’s reappearance, and it was Aziraphale’s prerogative to hear all, that there should be no secrets remaining between them. 

On a different afternoon Crowley returned from his glasshouses to find Aziraphale staring past the pages of his book, looking quite unsettled, and likely had been so for quite some time. 

“Everything alright?” Crowley asked as he sat down beside him, propping his feet up on the bed. It was designed to needle Aziraphale out of his mood, provoke him into a small fit of fussing about Crowley’s boots on the sheets, but it only succeeded for a moment before Aziraphale’s face again fell into a melancholic disposition, to say it was nothing, really, but the way his fingers gripped the edges of the Aquinas in his hands suggested this was an untruth. Crowley chose to venture a hypothesis on the reasoning composed the root of his love’s distress. 

“It won’t be the same, but we can do our best to replace any of the books lost in-” Aziraphale interrupted with a sad sigh, to explain that it was not the loss of the books which authored his pains on this particular day, but he only just realized something else had been sacrificed in the flames, and when he admitted it could not be replaced Crowley noticed the flush across his cheeks. 

“What treasure was this then?” He speculated it might be a painting or an original manuscript from a long dead relative, a tie to the Fells of old. Aziraphale loosened an unsteady groan. 

“Your letters… I kept them in the library, beside the bibles, where I might… But I’ve only just remembered this hour, that they’re all gone… and it is all my own doing.” Aziraphale was loathe to admit to it, that yet more of the words Crowley composed to him long ago were surrendered to the flames, though these perished in a terrible accident and not through some willful act to appease others, and as Crowley rose and left the room without a word Aziraphale feared that he was quite upset with the circumstances until he returned a short time later, laden with a large black trunk which he set out upon the floor. Aziraphale recognized the luggage from several days previous, when Crowley entertained him in showing off the methods employed to preserve the seeds and cuttings collected all over the world, preening when Aziraphale called them ingenious. The trunk had been at Crowley’s side the whole ten years Aziraphale should have been, yet now when he opened the trunk Crowley ignored the contents, running his hands along the edge of the lid, withdrawing when they found their prize - a large bundle of papers wrapped in oilskin. Aziraphale felt his heart quicken when Crowley handed him the package and he folded back its wrapping to reveal a pile of letters in a hand he well recognized, for how should he not when it was his very own? 

“You saved them?” It was a whisper which little concerned itself with the entangled violence of feeling it must communicate by necessity. Crowley only shrugged, trying to belie the taut line of his shoulders in the cavalier gesture, and said he had forgotten all about them until today, it wasn't quite what had perished, but perhaps they could be of some comfort, and would Aziraphale please stop looking at him that way? Aziraphale appreciated the lie in Crowley's words, the purpose of it, and smiled as he told Crowley that he need not be anxious, as he was nothing short of elated, and what need had he of letters, with Crowley there beside him? 

Though he made a brave effort, Crowley found himself quite unable to stammer out a reply. 

They sat together on the bed through the afternoon, reading over the letters and delighting or expressing embarrassment at peculiar turns of phrase, until at last they reached the very end, where Aziraphale came to a resolution. 

“I confess I have sat and done the same alone, with your letters, more often than I should, and yet one of them -” He faltered, then resumed. “What did you write in your last, Crowley? The one I…” He could not bring himself to the word ‘burn,’ but so obvious his intent that Crowley did not need him to continue. He pressed his lips into a thin line, and asked if Aziraphale needed to know the exact wording or only the shades of it. 

Crowley knew it by heart, had spent long hours in reviewing each word in his head countless times in vain to discover his error, the phrasing or the word he had so woefully misplaced, what alteration would have ensured Aziraphale’s amendability to his design. All of the business for naught, since not a single line of the note had ever been read. Predictably, Aziaphale was desirous to know each detail, and Crowley was seized by a cloud of nerves, as it had been quite a lovely day, and now here was a perfect opportunity to ruin all it should he make another mistake, but how earnestly he wished Aziraphale to finally hear it! Crowley asked if he was sure, and with Aziraphale’s fervent nod he readied a deep, calming breath before his recitation. 

“Angel,” the note began, as so many in those days had done, “I will remain here no longer, the reasons for which I am sure are quite obvious to you. I fear that your relations shall never approve of the match, considering my connections and my very person so inferior to you, and there will be no peace if we endeavour to pursue the course you have chartered for us. A hundred separate times should we apply to them, a hundred refusals we must be given, and the answer you seek will not come to pass.” Here Crowley looked to Aziraphale for any sign of discomfort, but the other bade him to proceed, despite the increasingly drawn lines of his face. “I am not part of their great plan, and in keeping with their desires I have elected to remove myself from it, and I only pray you are of similar mind to join me, and release yourself from the unhappy ties that have bound you to them. Wardenclyffe is no place for you, and I beg you to come away with me, to follow, as there is a whole world which might be ours, as we dreamed of so many times.” In the minute of silence that followed Aziraphale moved closer to him on the bed, as if in an attempt to find respite from his own emotions by burrowing into the curve of Crowley’s arms, mumbling into the fabric of his coat that still was yet to be told, and he would not shy from hearing the rest. Crowley, who would deny him nothing, regardless of his own reservations, made his conclusion. “There is an inn at Calais, the Hotel Fuir, and it is there I will wait for you. Once we are reunited we may draft the remainder of our days together. With my love, Crowley.” Crowley felt the heat rising into his face with each word that rushed out of his mouth, the erratic rise and fall of his chest. “It was too much to ask of you, I know that now, I know you wouldn’t have - couldn’t have -” But Aziraphale reached out a hand to steady him. 

“I wish I had,” he replied, simply. “How long did you wait for me?” Crowley mumbled it was but a scant few days, to which Aziraphale took to mean it was quite a long time indeed, and he felt the shame of his actions afresh. Crowley saw the change and pulled him closer, softly cradling his face in the ring of his hands. 

“It is as you said before. What need have I for the hurts of old? You are - _we_ are here now, and this as far as I need concern myself.” He leaned forward, tilting his forehead to Aziraphale’s, found love and reconciliation in the sharpness of their shared breaths. “However,” he whispered. “I must insist that you… I would rather -” He abandoned dignity wholly. “Please, please do not ever do such a thing again.” 

“Never,” vowed Aziraphale, and his grip on Crowley’s shoulders grew almost painful, though Crowley would willingly submit to a tenfold increase in that pressure than to ever call for its refrain. “Never again, my dear.” 

 

* * *

 

One particularly fine day, Aziraphale expressed his desire to take a turn about the grounds, and after innumerable reassurances he would speak up the moment he felt fatigued, Crowley was delighted in the opportunity to show him the glasshouses and the workings therein, and once inside he found it quite impossible to suppress a fond smile as Aziraphale darted from one set of leaves to the next, marvelling over colors and shapes, speaking to the plants as nicely as Crowley did not. 

“Crowley, look at the petals on this one!” Aziraphale was crouched low near a burst of orange blooms tipped with gold. “What is it?” 

“It’s called a Gaillardia, angel. And stop fawning, you’ll spoil it.”

“Certainly not,” Aziraphale shook his head and chuckled, “But what are these doing out here?” Crowley glared at the gaillardia, insisting with his eyes as best he could that the flower should not be inflating itself with such a fine shower of compliments, and he looked up to see Aziraphale eagerly fumbling through a box full of books Crowley knew had not been upon his departure the previous day. A letter addressed to Crowley lay on the topmost volume, and though he didn’t recognize the childish scrawl, there remained no question as to its origin, and it was in his eagerness to seek the answer of why Adam would ever write to him in light of their last words together that he tore through the seal at once to scan the lines written there.  

 

_Mr. Crowley,_

_It’s all right. You didn’t have to say those things when we spoke last. I know you didn't mean what you said, but adults get mixed up sometimes when they're hurting, like the way Brian is always short with us when he’s had a bad day. Pepper's mom explained a bit too, and we all hope that Mr. Fell is recovering from what happened. I also should thank you, because since you and Mr. Fell both changed your future, there’s no reason I can’t do the same for me and my friends._

_The books in the box are all for Mr. Fell because we were sorry to hear about his library. I have no need for some of them and my father never looks at the rest. I trust you will not mind if we again employ the use of your glasshouses until I am obliged to go to school in the fall._

_Adam Young_  

 

Crowley was not halfway through the note before Aziraphle was combing through the piles and humming happily as he read through titles, from well worn children’s books to treatises on law and philosophy that seemed to have graced their former shelves for the look of them, as their spines bore not the slightest indication of their having ever been opened. Aziaphale was passing his hands over each of them as reverently as he would one of his bibles lost to the fire at Wardenclyffe, and when he looked up at Crowley his eyes were shining. Crowley made an effort to hide the similar state of his own due to the contents of the letter, but it was of little avail. 

“He stole these from his father, didn’t he?” Aziraphale asked, and Crowley went to take his hand as he responded that it was undoubtedly the case. 

“And we will have to give them all back?” 

“Tomorrow, love.” Crowley lightly kissed him. “We can return them tomorrow.” 

 

* * *

 

The day after they attempted to return the stolen property to Mr. Young and been absolutely refused with words full of gentlemanly virtue and principle, they sat together at the breakfast table, one of their newly acquired volumes between them, cheerfully arguing some point over Linnaeus’ classification system in regards to aquatic wildlife when it was announced that a man claiming the title of Mr. Fell’s cousin was just arrived: Aziraphale went quite pale and Crowley almost cracked his teacup on its saucer at the pronouncement, and a tense moment later it was confirmed. Gabriel awaited them in the foyer, as the man insisted on his refusal to come further into the house. Crowley toyed with the fork before him on the table until Aziraphale abruptly stood and made his way to the door with purpose, and Crowley could not help but follow him. 

The years had been quite kind to Aziraphale's cousin Gabriel, peppering him with grey hairs that added to his distinguished bearing and strengthening the shape of his jaw, but they did nothing to improve the coldness of his eyes, the slight pull at the corners of his mouth, the air of being slightly disgusted with all he looked upon but being born of stock to decent to make the unkindness of these opinions plain. Greetings were not exchanged on either side, for how could they, when Gabriel denied Crowley even the esteem of a moment’s attention, and Crowley unsurprised to discover the bile of abhorrence resting low in his belly. He was about to forgo any pretense at all and at once demand the man make immediate egress from the house when Aziraphale spoke first, asking Gabriel in a flat tone what he was doing at Pinebrace. 

"To come collect you, of course, and bring you back to Bath with me!” The brightness of his tone was in sharp contrast to the glacial immobility in his face. “You received my letter, yes? You’ve had a terrible shock, and there’s no better cure than a change of scenery, and my agent can go over the improvements to be made when Wardenclyffe is restored." A smile appeared along with the spring in his tone, like all was arranged, already decided, but those eyes remained: chips of lavender ice which never held claim to the slightest bit of sympathy. "Departing this afternoon, well, that would obviously be best, but if you require any time to say farewells to your… to Mr. Crowley, we can leave at your earliest convenience tomorrow." At the pointed distaste of the pronunciation of his own name Crowley looked at Aziraphale sharply, struck by the notion that perhaps Aziraphale engineered this meeting himself, sent a message to his cousin to bid him come, but the confusion on Aziraphale's face resulted in the idea vanishing of an instant, and Crowley's misplaced sense of betrayal landed firmly where it belonged. 

"I don't believe Aziraphale needs to be taken anywhere," said Crowley, taking a step forward. 

"I hoped the local gossip was mistaken, as I thought this… attachment diminished long ago." Gabriel directed this at Aziraphale, and still refused to acknowledge Crowley. That smug smile was fixed in place as Gabriel related how it was well known Crowley was at Wardenclyffe quite late the night of the fire, had all but pulled Aziraphale from the flames, and he comprehended Aziraphale holding some sense of regard for him. "But this… living in his home, engaged in all but name - it is just as well that only I am here to bear witness, for if your parents still lived they should go to their reward all over again to see you stand beside him, you can be certain of-" Crowley opened his mouth to tell this man exactly what he could be certain of should he carry on speaking to Aziraphale in this manner, but did not get so far as one syllable before Aziraphale took Crowley's hand, and Gabriel seemed taken by a violent illness at the sight.

"I am not going with you," Aziraphale said, quite easily. "I will _not_ be restoring Wardenclyffe, either.” Crowley was faintly shocked to hear such a thing, as he presumed the rebuilding effort inevitable, but would not give Gabriel the satisfaction to see it. “I do not care what those who are not present to judge might say, nor do I care for your failure greet the master of this estate, and were you a stranger I should be quite embarrassed to know you. As I cannot escape the connection, I am merely ashamed I ever held any regard for your opinion of my doings, and I bid you a good morning and a fine journey back to Bath." It was Crowley’s turn for a smile, grinning as he swept past Gabriel to open the front door himself, as a servant might, knowing how any display of inferiority would enrage.

“So unfortunate it is that this visit must endure such an early termination,” he said, as Gabriel refused to move from where he stood, rooted to the spot. “We must look you up next time we holiday together in Bath.” At last Gabriel rounded on him, and for a man accustomed to employing his height and rank to intimidate, he found the disdainful glint in Crowley’s eyes nigh intolerable.

“I hope you understand what you’ve done,” he said. “You’ve torn him down from his rightful place, and henceforth the name of Fell will never escape the association with the name of Crowley, he’ll be shunned by society, and all for some -” 

“I rather find the society we keep to be of too good sense to act thusly, though were you to chance those circles, I have no doubt at all which of us should be subject to scorn and censure. Now if you are quite through attempting to insult and offend by every possible method, I have reason to suspect your rank and name have no affect on your ability to understand the implicit meaning of an open door?” Gabriel’s eyes at last thawed their frozen expression, and, along with the rush of color to his face, spoke to the rush of strong emotions Crowley’s words evoked. With a last look at Aziraphale, where the fondness for Crowley’s statement was too obvious to tolerate, he shouted something about how such a state was not to be borne, and swept out of Pinebrace with the last the dignity he could scrape from the polished wooden floors. 

Crowley slammed the door at his exit, and then turned to Aziraphale, hoping he had not been overly zealous in his dismissal, saddened at the distressed expression he saw there. 

“I will make no apologies for what I said-” he began, but Aziraphale frowned and picked at his cravat. 

“No - that’s not - might we not - ah, retire for the rest of the morning?” He cast his eyes upward to the floor above, and Crowley floundered for a moment before grasping his meaning, the principle of Aziraphale’s sudden affliction being of an wholly different nature, and he nodded with all the vigor of man in a desert at the offer of a cool drink.

“Right then. Well -” Aziraphale seemed at a loss until Crowley laced their fingers together and led him up the staircase, and were it not for his sensitivity towards the remaining delicacies of Aziraphale’s lungs, he would have sprinted the length from the foyer to his chambers. Their chambers. 

 

* * *

 

It was a few days following Gabriel’s truncated appointment when Hastur and Ligur made a similarly objectionable appearance, though instead of attempting to force another separation, they desired additional recompense than had already been supplied in far more abundance than ever could have been expected or deserved. They were shown into the library just before tea, where Crowley and Aziraphale were seated together upon the sofa, Crowley dozing, his head in Aziraphale's lap and his long legs draped over the side of the furniture. Aziraphale read quietly from a book bigger than any either of them had ever laid eyes upon. 

Crowley, as peaceful as a man could ever conceivably hope to be, did not stir at their entrance, but after they had been announced and the servant made his bows and departed, Aziraphale glanced up from the pages of his text, meeting both their eyes in turn, requiring no words to communicate his displeasure with their presence. There was something in his expression, something dangerous and possessive they had not predicted in one thought so soft, which suggested it should be the best course for everyone if they were to never be seen near the halls of Pinebrace that day, or ever again. Without the honor of another acknowledgement, Aziraphale again dropped his eyes to his book and began absently carding his fingers through Crowley's hair. When again he looked up after the removal of several minutes time, the doorway was empty, and Aziraphale’s hand stilled. Crowley stirred at the absence of touch, and muttered through the haze of sleep if something was amiss. 

“Not at all my dear. Go back to sleep.” Crowley shrugged. 

“Only if you continue your present occupation?” With an indulgent chuckle, Aziraphale returned to running his fingers delicately along Crowley’s scalp, even after his breaths adopted the even humor of a fine nap. 

 

* * *

 

Once Aziraphale recovered the majority of his health, their friends were again frequent visitors at Pinebrace, and with the renewal of conversation and subtleties, Crowley was at last able to speak with someone else on the extraordinary quality of Miss Device and Mr. Pulsifer’s courtship, or, perhaps more appropriately, the lack thereof. Aziraphale was of the same opinion as Crowley, for it was obvious to everyone how each regarded the other, and though Mr. Pulsifer could not be expected to bridge the gap from longing looks into the heated press of hands, it was a wonder one such as Miss Device would also choose to hesitate, and, in the common way a couple might build and bolster each other’s fancies and determinations, the pair was determined to discover the full complexion of the circumstances before the season arrived, and Miss Device and Mr. Pulsifer would again be separated by the necessities those few months must bring. 

 Such an opportunity arose but a short time later, as Aziraphale found himself quite distressed during the fourth week of his and Crowley’s new cohabitation, and sought out the company of Miss Device, travelling the short way to Moonwatch for the afternoon, where he voiced his own concerns to the lady, who, startlingly, found herself in the same position, and it all poured out of the two in a rush. Perhaps one was rather tired of waiting to be proposed to, and what could possibly be the delay in Crowley’s or Newt’s, as Miss Device called him with a blush, getting on with their asking? Miss Device was of the opinion it was not fair for Mr. Fell to be such as she, for he had barely been in close communication with Mr. Crowley a month while she was now waiting nigh on a year! Aziraphale did not venture to guess that the nature of his own relationship was of a decidedly more intimate nature than the young couple’s. 

“I am sure Mr. Pulsifer is only wanting some encouragement,” Aziraphale said. “You cannot be unaware of the reticence in his character.” 

“But therein lies my own!” Miss Device exclaimed. “If he does not love me enough to move to action then how can I expect him to remain constant throughout the rest of our days?” Mr. Pulsifer’s constancy could not be any less suspect, on display whenever he and Miss Device were within thirty feet of each other to anyone with eyes to see, and Aziraphale wondered aloud if it would not be better if Miss Device should propose, as, he recommended, perhaps Mr. Pulsifer would believe it far too forward to make an advance to one such as she without any reassurance to the outcome. 

“How could he hold any uncertainty to what my reply would be? Such would be as preposterous as Mr. Crowley doubting your response should he ask the same.” Aziraphale carefully turned over these words in his mind, testing their weight, before emitting a soft “Oh,” across the table. 

“Oh dear,” fretted Aziraphale. “I do believe that may be exactly the issue.” Miss Device raised her eyebrows in question, and though he was sure she either knew or supposed most of it, he explained his responsibility for their long separation, and Crowley might yet harbour... reservations, to again make his appeal. “Happy as I am the solution to your situation presents itself, I’ve yet to come to my own,” Miss Device concluded. Aziraphale asked her if there were not something else at the heart of her reservations, and after Miss Device made a quick study of the room, she whispered lowly that the true deterrent was her grandmother.

 Miss Device was of the age where one examines how they have grown, and she was keenly aware of how her life had been conducted in accordance with Lady Nutter’s desires, and as she faced a life of independence, how much of who she had become was her own doing, and how much had been through the influence of her grandmother? Lady Nutter was so desirous of her union to Mr. Pulsifer she all but engineered it herself, and if she, Anathema, were to accept him as her husband, everything would be the same as it had been before, and she should never find liberation from the patterns they had fallen into. 

Aziraphale, who again confirmed she was quite in love with Mr. Pulsifer, and was fairly pining for him, was quite put out by this reasoning, as what impediment lingered if love bloomed between a pair which earned the approval of both families?  They argued circuitously with the business for some time, neither side making much sense to the other, Miss Device insisting if she were to venture the proposal, it would be no different than if her grandmother told her to do so, Aziraphale appalled that anyone would sacrifice their own happiness for any reason, and it went on until Aziraphale realized that if he did not depart for home he would miss the soonest opportunity to make clear his own desires, and rushed back to Pinebrace. 

 

* * *

 

During supper that night, when Aziraphale asked if Crowley might not wish to marry him with all due haste, Crowley choked on his wine, and nodded a desperate yes through all his coughing, lest Aziraphale foolishly take his surprise as a refusal and withdraw the sentiment completely.

In the due course of time, as they lay in bed together, Aziraphale disclosed the details of the conversation between himself and Miss Device, and Crowley held him closer as he came to the point of his revelation. 

“You see my dear, it was when I realized why you might have such hesitation that I knew I must be the one to ask you, else we would be certain to get ourselves quite mixed up all over again.” But in contrast to his expectations of a mocking groan or rolling eyes, Crowley was still and tense beside him, and Aziraphale wondered how he managed to twist himself into frightful state of doubt this time. 

“I will be content without it, angel. We don’t have to go through with it, not if you’re only doing it for my sake, or for what anyone else might say of our situation.” He said it with a brave face but Aziraphale tutted at him, for he had been waiting to marry Crowley for over a decade, and if that wasn’t reason enough, well then - Crowley ceased his declarations with a kiss.

“Alright, it’s all right, but it’s only - You understand that I must ensure the enthusiasm is your own.” 

 “I should be happy to show you the extent of my enthusiasm to the ends of the earth, but how should we help the two of them, then, Miss Device and Mr. Pulsifer?” 

“Do you want to help them along, a bit?” 

After all, it was only be the grace and meddling of Lady Nutter that they currently shared the same bed at all, though Crowley did often articulate his preference for Aziaphale to spend more of his time wrapped around him and less straining his eyes in reading by the light of the bedside candle. Why should they not take a hand to interfere, as she had? How to rouse Mr. Pulisfer to action, Aziraphale speculated, but to Crowley, the solution was already at hand, covered under a sheet in the western drawing room. 

 

* * *

 

Upon the next visit from Lady Nutter and her erstwhile companions, Aziraphale intercepted the venerable lady on the pretense of seeking her opinion on some aspect of the impending wedding feast, leaving Crowley alone with Miss Device and Mr. Pulsifer. He escorted them to the drawing room, complaining that he should want nothing more from the union but a husband, and yet if Aziraphale asked the whole of London down for the happy affair with enough food for the entirety of his majesty’s navy, then that was precisely what Crowley would provide. 

“I do worry about your attendance,” he admitted when they reached their destination. “I expect something else should hold sway over your time.” Miss Device assured him scarcely anything could prevent them, now that the happy event was so near upon them all, and Mr. Pulsifer nodded in eager agreement. 

“You shall have to judge for yourselves.” With a flourish, Crowley pulled away the cloth which concealed the picture beneath: the stunning likeness Miss Device painted of Mr. Pulsifer nearly a year past, the measure of her care for him rendered in each of her fine, even brush strokes. Someone gasped, it was impossible to say which, and Crowley used the ensuing silence to slip out of the room, leaving a now stammering Anathema to explain the portrait to Mr. Pulisfer. 

 

* * *

 

Gabriel, who we can imagine returned to Bath quite put out by the knowledge that his cousin had chosen his own side over that of his family, took heart the certainty that Aziraphale should soon come to regret his defiance: we can just as easily wonder how he wilted as the passing of each year brought instead news quite to the contrary. He could not even find relief from the mention of them, for the lapse of three years saw Crowley’s hand in trade revealed to all, and though there was the usual distaste among society at the slightest suggestion that money was exchanged for the luxuries they concerned themselves with, there was also a subsequent flurry of new situations created about some of the finest homes, with the newness and boldness of the plants Crowley’s company supplied the focus of the movement, and as Crowley and Aziraphale’s fortunes increased, so too did Gabriel’s desire to mend the wounds between them. Crowley was superbly gratified the day his letter of reconciliation visited them, in both the reading of it aloud to Aziraphale and watching his husband burn the note in the flame of a candle upon their dinner table. The flurry of letters received when Aziraphale signed the papers which would transform Wardenclyffe into a school for impoverished children suffered a similar fate.

Hastur and Ligur, trusting their sharp instincts of self-preservation above all else, never did so much as look upon the grounds of Pinebrace again, nor was there ever a missive sent to suggest their cousin Crowley might render more aid to the remainder of his family. Yet do not despair for them, as there remains little uncertainty they soon found mischief enough again, under the sharp hand of a new, self-appointed prince of London’s criminal element, who called themselves Beezlebub and vowed to make society lose so much of their finery to pickpockets and thieves each season as to regret calling for their dreadful balls and assemblies at all. 

Adam could not escape his being sent to school in the fall, and to university some years thereafter. Most unfolded as Crowley told him it might, and he discovered the world to be quite a bit more complicated than he had found it at eleven. But never did he lose the fire which burned inside him, and his repeated agitation for reform was bolstered by the efforts of his constant companions of youth, who had fallen into fortunes of their own. 

It is remarkable how a single, headstrong boy not yet reached his majority can manage to change the lives of his three friends, yet in Adam’s situation, he was gifted with considerable aid from two wealthy gentleman of the neighborhood, who made some justification or another for providing scholarships for three intelligent youths, with supplementary education in the interim. These three children, called Pepper, Brian, and Wensleydale by those who knew them best, would in their adulthood be permitted to move in different circles than in which they were raised, and the rift that must grow between them and Adam need not be so high, nor the wall so deep, as may have been otherwise. The four never did quite cease their appropriation of Mr. Crowley’s greenhouses, even many years later, and sometimes, on a fine afternoon in May or June, Pepper, Wendslydale, and Brian would sit and take tea with Aziraphale while Adam and Crowley argued over the proper attention to be given to their collective masterwork: a tree which grew no less than five different species of apples on its boughs. 

Miss Anathema Device and the former Mr. Newton Pulsifer were able to attend the wedding which united the names of Crowley to Fell in the end, eloping as they did the very next day after the reveal of Miss Device’s passions and Mr. Pulsifers almost immediate proposal at Pinebrace to a small chapel on the outskirts of Paris, becoming Ms. and Mr. Device just as across the channel Crowley and Aziraphale toasted themselves to a drop of well done meddling. They were back home before the month was out and, despite Ms. Device’s doubts, she and Lady Nutter settled into a simpler orbit, where Ms. Device felt free to ignore her grandmother’s advice and desires if she so chose. She and her husband would remain at Moonwatch the whole of their days, where Mr. Device’s mother was known make visits on just the side of excessive, to marvel at how her son had been so fortunate in his winning such a wife. Mr. Device dutifully tended to the running of the household while she published her essays detailing how new advancements in astronomy and mathematics might be employed in divination and the occult, and never was a man more proud of his wife than the day she lectured on her discoveries to the Royal Society, predicting it should not be too long at all before a man might travel all the way to Alpha Centauri and be back before tea. 

Such haste dear reader, to barely scan the fates of all others in your eagerness to learn that of Crowley and Aziraphale! Well, you may rest assured the subject of this narrative and the object of his affections were married in a quiet ceremony upon the grounds which Crowley had so meticulously arranged, their friends and most intimate neighbors the only attendants, as not a word had been raised to object in declining to invite the families of either. Crowley wore black, Aziraphale wore white, and somewhere in a family bible now there is, pressed between two pages alongside a certificate of marriage, a single white feather wrapped in silver thread, the last remaining pieces of two costumes worn only once, at a masked ball held so very long ago. 

Lady Nutter’s joy was made double by the knowledge there was no such spectacle to plan and parcel for her own granddaughter, as there is always more enjoyment to be had in the attending than the planning of such a happy event, and this felicity was fully on display in her hearty laughter and secretive smiles at the celebration. It was to the woman and her family that Crowley and Aziraphale should ever be on the fondest terms, for without her keen observation and good sense, they may have been the instruments of their own destruction instead of, as they were to be forevermore, the reasons for each other’s lifelong happiness.

* * *

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you all so much for keeping up with me and leaving so many kudos and comments. This was absolutely a labor of love, and I was so happy to share it with all of you. If you liked what you saw here please feel free to check out my other GO fics, or come hang out with me on the tumbls where I'm [@soft-october-night](https://soft-october-night.tumblr.com/)

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Everything is Not Tickety-boo](https://archiveofourown.org/works/20138713) by [Eudoxia](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Eudoxia/pseuds/Eudoxia)




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